What I’ve done right with my portfolio

Christine Benz of Morningstar There are definitely things I get wrong in my assets portfolio I hold too much company stock and cash and I don t have the recommended allowance of bonds for a person my age My record on curbing taxes hasn t been perfect I ve held tax-inefficient funds in a taxable account and have been slow to move money into IRAs each year But despite these missteps my husband and I have managed to do just fine from a big-picture standpoint Here s what has worked for us We maintained a high savings rate Luck played a starring role in our ability to save My husband and I had the good fortune of emerging from college debt-free which enabled us to buy a house and start saving for retirement early in our careers We ve also both been employed for three-plus decades meaning that we ve been able to sock away a good share of our incomes and benefit from employer-matching contributions tax-deferred upsurge and a long runway of commitment compounding We don t have a budget but automating our stake contributions has helped us be disciplined about saving That s not to say we haven t made sacrifices We spent multiple a weekend working on our old house when we were just starting out and I ve constantly driven my husband s hand-me-down cars The home renovations were fun and I m not into cars so it s a stretch to call either of those things a big sacrifice Stocks delivered We ve also lucked out in terms of territory performance There have been specific bad spots but over our -year investing horizon thus far stocks have returned about on an annualized basis That s a fabulous rate of return by any measure Of curriculum stock domain returns over any specific time horizon are mainly luck of the draw but I m giving us a minimal skill points here because we haven t pulled back from stocks during times of territory duress We ve kept investing and even added extra to them above and beyond our automatic contributions when we ve had extra cash on hand It has helped that we re too busy to think much about our investments and we understand that stocks invariably shake off their periodic swoons We curbed stake costs Limiting resources costs has been another major tailwind one that enabled us to receive our fair share of the sphere s returns I briskly got religion on the importance of limiting costs early in my career And as an analyst I learned that expense ratios were much more predictive of a fund s future prospects than its past returns My employer s k venture menu skews toward low-cost investments and my husband and I gravitated to cheap funds for the rest of our portfolio We kept it basic My preferences in the realm of investing products are definitely basic We dabbled in individual stocks in the late s when everyone seemed to be opening a brokerage account But our portfolio was inevitably largely anchored in core stock funds Related Articles Job hugging What it is and what it means for your money How tariffs could mess with your pumpkin spice options to get on the path to lifetime income A guide to earning and redeeming frequent flyer miles With groceries more expensive than ever here s how to save money My cynicism about the funding industry grew as I observed the pattern of firms launching products only after an asset class had enjoyed a strong runup in the sphere While we have maintained a healthy allocation to non-US stocks which has certainly held back our results relative to a US allocation that s about as exotic as it gets for us Just as fundamental is what we ve avoided alternative resources products cryptocurrency thematic funds and the other capital fads that have come and gone over the years I haven t run the numbers but I know ignoring the fads has redounded to the benefit of our long-term results This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar For more personal finance content go to https www morningstar com personal-finance Christine Benz is the director of personal finance and retirement planning at Morningstar