Sunday, August 19, 2012

Are Target Date Retirement Funds Worth It?

I highly suggest investing your hard earned dollars into one of the following Target Date Funds only as a supplement to your Roth IRA dividend stock portfolio. If you ask me, investing in individual stocks is the way to go. If you plan on signing up for a Target Date fund, go ahead and pick one of these below.

BlackRock LifePath Target Date Funds
Fidelity Freedom Funds
J.P. Morgan SmartRetirement Funds

What are Target Date Funds? Click here for a complete recap. Here are some bullet points below:

  • Target date funds were first introduced in the early 1990s with BGI being the first institution to offer such products.
  • Target date funds are aimed at people planning for retirement and have appeal because they offer a life-long managed investment strategy so should remain appropriate to an investor's risk profile even if left accidentally un-reviewed. 
  • Target Date, or age based funds are particularly attractive as default investment funds. 
  • They do not offer a guaranteed return but offer a convenient multi-asset retirement savings strategy through a single outcome-oriented fund.
  • Target date funds' asset allocation mix typically provides exposure to return seeking assets, such as equities, in early years when risk capacity is higher, and becomes increasingly conservative as time progresses with exposure switched progressively towards capital-preservation assets, such as government- and index-linked bonds.
  • The funds are not without their critics, who point to the unexpected volatility of some near-dated target-date funds in the 2008 financial crisis, suggesting they were not as conservatively positioned as their name would imply. In response to this, the SEC and DoL hosted a joint hearing on Examining Target Date Funds in June 2009, which found that while target-date funds were generally a welcome innovation, disclosure had to be improved to ensure investors were fully aware of a target-date fund glide path  which may differ from manager to manager. The rules on disclosures for target-date funds were published by the SEC in 2010.
Watch the videos below to learn more about all that is Target Date Funds!

Off Target? An In Depth Look At Target-Date Investing (80 Minutes)

Using Target Date Funds

What is a target-date investment?

How does a target-date investment work?

Choosing a target-date investment

The evolution of target-date investments

Working beyond the target date

No comments:

Post a Comment

Share

Widgets

Subscribe for FREE!