Somebody Help Out the New Guy

[shak23]

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Greetings All. Here it is... I'm new to federal service and the TSP. I stumbled across this website and have found it both massively enlightening and tremendously overwhelming. I'm learning about self-managed financing, but at this point, I'm clearly deficient in the skills & knowledgerequired for optimum success.

I'm in it for the long-haul.Became a fed employeein Sept 2004. Starting contributingNov 2004. Not retiring for 30yrs... maybe 25 (?20) if I can make some serious returns on my investment.

Not much of a day trader at this point- just don't understand all the indicators, prognosticators, and complicators of the market. Still learning.

Currently I'm 20%G / 30%C / 30%S / 20%I. My paycheck contributions are divided to the same percentatges 20/30/30/20. I've been using the Excel Allocations Table and Ihate watching my returns go in the negative direction, but I keep reading that if I'm in the for the long-term, then I should Buy and Hold w/ a slightly more aggressive approach.

Anybody have any recommendations- Allocation/Contributions/Learing Tools- books... or General Info???

Help a Newbie out. Thanks in advance.

 

[rokid]

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Shak23,

At your age you might want to go with 10% bonds. Look at the Vanguard lifecycle fund allocations, e.g. 2045.

Learning tool recommendations:

Common Sense on Mutual Funds by John Bogle

A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel

Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel

The Four Pillars of Investing by William Bernstein

Also check out http://www.efficientfrontier.com

Good luck! :^

 

[Rolo]

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shak23 wrote:

...Ihate watching my returns go in the negative direction, but I keep reading that if I'm in the for the long-term, then I should Buy and Hold w/ a slightly more aggressive approach.

True.

If you want to tinker with timing, be aware that most market timers fail to beat the average.

Of course, that hasn't stopped most of us from giving it a go.

What you have now is fine until you understand when and why you want to change it. Hold off on bonds until after interest rates rise.

 

[shak23]

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Thanks for the input.

So you think I should move out of G and push more into C and S? What about the way I'm funding these with each pay period- ie: directly into each allocation as opposed to directly into G... then waiting for a low in C or S to jump in? That takes a big assumption that I actually know when we've hit a low!?! Right now there's only a few thousand in each of my allocation (just started).

The help is greatly appreciated. :^

 

[tsptalk]

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Hi shak -
I think 80% stocks in this environment for a long term buy and hold investoris fine.
I may get more aggressive than that soon but I will also get out if we rally too far again. My approach is a different monster.

If you are a buy and holder, I would keep your contributions the same as your account allocation. There will be a better time later this year to move to 100% stocks in my opinion.

There are some suggested allocations at the bottomof ...
([url]http://www.tsptalk.com/longer_term.html[/url]).

Thanks for joining us!
Tom