The Rob Berger Show

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RBS 192: Should You Reduce Your Stock Exposure for Today's Market Valuations: 60/40 vs 40/60 Mar 03, 2025

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With stock valuations near all-time highs in the U.S., many people are asking whether we should reduce or exposure to stocks. In fact, a recent Vanguard market outlook report concluded that a typical 60/40 retirement portfolio may be too rich, and that a 40/60 portfolio is a better option in this valuation environment.
This video is my take on all of this.
Resources:
Vanguard Report: https://corporate.vanguard.com/conten...
Bogleheads Forum Post: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/view...

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RBS 191: The Bond Funds I Use To Protect My Retirement Portfolio (FQF) Feb 28, 2025

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Welcome back to another edition of Five Question Friday (FQF). Here are today's questions:
1. What bond funds do I use in my portfolio?
2. Do you really need an emergency fund?
3. How does living off interest work with Bengen's 4% rule?
4. How to track money market funds in my investment tracking spreadsheet?
5. Are money market funds better than intermediate-term bond funds?

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RBS 190: Warren Buffett Just Dumped Berkshire's S&P 500 Index Funds. Should we? Feb 24, 2025

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Warren Buffett recently sol 100% of the two S&P 500 index funds Berkshire Hathaway owned, including Vanguard's VOO. In this video, we'll look at whether we should too.
News Article: https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-fu...
Berkshire's Stock Holdings: https://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.p...
Berkshire's Net Stock Sales: https://x.com/dividend_data/status/18...

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RBS 189: These Fidelity Funds Beat a Vanguard 3-Fund Portfolio (FQF) Feb 14, 2025

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Welcome to another edition of Five Question Friday (FQF). Here are the 5 questions:
1. Can one Fidelity fund beat the Vanguard 3-fund portfolio?
2. How do expense ratios work with fund of funds?
3. Concerning the 4% rule, which I believe the analysis runs out for 30 years, if someone starts to take a yearly percentage out of their portfolio at a later age, say in their mid-70s, can the starting point of 4% be safely increased, and to what?
4. How to Track a Complicated Portfolio
5. What should we make of Vanguard's paper that indicates a better asset allocation for retirement income is a majority of bonds (like 40% equities, 60% bonds!) as opposed to long-established portfolios that are more like 60/40 in favor of equities. Even Bill Bengen didn't recommend going below 50% equities, right?

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RBS 188: ProjectionLab Review (w/ Updates and Promo Code) Feb 12, 2025

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Get 10% off the cost of ProjectionLab with promo code RBERGER-10 using this link: https://go.robberger.com/projectionla....
In today's video, we'll look at the following features of ProjectionLab:
1. Export/Import Data
2. Income/Expense
3. Tax Analytics
4. Drawdowns
5. Bond Allocation

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RBS 187: SEC Fines Vanguard $106.41 Million Over Target Date Fund Snafu Jan 24, 2025

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Today, the SEC announced a $106.41 million settlement with Vanguard following moves Vanguard made in 2020 that resulted in excessive capital gains distributions to retail investors. In this video, I'll walk through the settlement order and what it means to investors.
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RBS 186: A Simple Way to Leave Your Financial Advisor to Invest On Your Own Without Fear (FQF) Jan 19, 2025

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In today's episode of Five Question Friday (FQF), we start with a strategy you might consider if you want to leave your expensive financial advisor but you are afraid of going it alone. Here are all the questions in today's show:
1. How to leave your financial advisor
2. TIPS ladder vs BND
3. Are Target Date Funds a Reasonable Option
4. If a person has over $250,000 in a Fidelity account, should they open up another account - say with Vanguard, Schwab, M1 Finance, or perhaps another brokerage - elsewhere as well?
5. How do we rebalance assets in Boldin? If we enter a 60/40 portfolio today, after a few years, it turns into 80/20, which means the software is not rebalancing automatically.2. For the BND fund, what rate of return will you use?
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RBS 185: Are Investment Banks Worth the High Fees? FQF Jan 11, 2025

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We start this week's Five Question Friday (FQF) with a question about whether a 2% investment fee is crazy. Here are the five questions:
1. Am I crazy to be paying a 2% fee to manage my investments at Morgan Stanley?
2. Can you analyze 100% BND versus 50% BND and 50% VIPSX.
3. In Boldin, what are you setting as projected returns?
4. How should I invest if I don't need the money in retirement?
5. Is direct indexing worth the cost and complexity?
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RBS 184: 13 Must-Do Financial Steps To Take Five Years Before You Retire Jan 10, 2025

Show notes

With five years to go before retirement, there are several steps you can and should take to prepare. In this video, I'll cover 13 things to consider as your retirement date draws closer.
Resources mentioned:
Boldin: https://go.robberger.com/new-retireme...
Tiller: https://go.robberger.com/tiller/yt-5-...
Rocket Money: https://go.robberger.com/rocket-money...
Lunch Money: https://go.robberger.com/lunch-money/...
Vanguard Asset Allocation: https://investor.vanguard.com/investo...
Open Social Security: https://opensocialsecurity.com/
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RBS 183: 2025 Annual Portfolio Review Checklist Jan 06, 2025

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At least once a year it's important to review your investment portfolio and make any necessary adjustments. Here are the 10 things I check every year:
1. Write down your planned asset allocation
2. Compare your actual allocation to your plan
3. Evaluate individual holdings
4. Evaluate your asset location
5. Confirm you have beneficiaries listed for each account
6. Check your performance for the past year
7. Check for excessive stock concentration
8. Evaluate your advisor relationship & fees
9. Make sure you have 2FA on all financial accounts and email
10. Evaluate if you can simplify your portfolio
Resources
Empower: https://go.robberger.com/empower/yt-y...
Investment Tracking Spreadsheet: https://robberger.com/investment-trac...
Morningstar: https://www.morningstar.com/
ETF Overlap Tool: https://www.etfrc.com/funds/overlap.php
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