CAOS
Alpha Architect Tail Risk ETF
stock BATS ETF

Every situation is different.
My job is particular as it take decades to bring up to steam but once stabilized it bring high and stable income for a long time.
So I’m late in investing, but can sustain unusual risks for my age.
Thats my very personal context.
So it means I would be always be fully invested (even with a small but significant side bet in options that paid very well).
To bring something to the discussion, I think most portfolios aren’t optimized for what really matters to individual investors: total return/max draw down risk
So I built an optimizer to find the Pareto Front (with simple Monte Carlo search) of the combination of all the products in the market.
Almost all the points at the front contain the same funds: RSST, DBMF, gold and some efficient tail risk insurance like CAOS.
I personally aim for the knuckle of the Pareto return/max DD and it gives me about 40%, 30%, 25%, 5%. Something like that.
VT or VOO alone are far for the optimal front for that metric that matters to me.

Sorry in advance for this monstrously long post. 😬
I’ve been avoiding thinking about this for years and today I finally sat down and tried to make sense of my own portfolio, investments, and… see how much money I’ve been wasting away by paying an AUM advisor the last 5-6 years...  
Taking on my own finances has seemed overwhelming as a self-declared “not mathematically inclined” human, especially since I started working in big tech and the numbers felt “like they should have a professional looking after them” or something. At this point though I finally just told myself to get over it and try and figure out a plan, so I fussed around a bit and I’m hoping to maybe get some feedback from folks here about if I’m on the right track or need to rethink the entire thing. 
My goals really are 1/ to take ownership of my own finances and not be scared of self-management anymore, 2/ keep something of the “values-based” approach my advisor helped me with (dodge some amount of defense/weapons, big oil, autocratic governments… I realize my plan doesn’t do this completely but I wanted to at least try and give a tilt), and 3/ set myself up for my life goals of coast-FI in a few years, starting a family (wedding and one planned child), and purchasing a home in likely a HCOL area. 
# Baseline Numbers/Info
* Total Net Worth: \~$2.38M
* Age: 39
* Debt / Property: Zero debt, currently renting, no property owned except a 2014 honda civic.
* Current Fees: AUM is 0.6%, Specialized ETFs are average of 0.23% so total of \~0.83%
* Average Current Monthly Spend (including rent): $6,500
* Career & Location: Working full-time at a big tech company in the Bay Area. Not married, long-term partner.
* Future Horizon / Plans: 
* Aiming for a move to HCOL and a home purchase likely in 1.5-2 years, and ideally Coast-FIRE around then as well; sooner if possible!
* Plan to have 1 child in \~5 years (post Coast-FIRE).
* Current Asset Allocation & Accounts:
* Employer 401(k): \~$838.5k (Pre-tax)
* Core Brokerage: \~$758k (Taxable - holds a mix of ESG core, factor funds like QUS/QMOM/QVAL/IMOM/IVAL, and cash equivalents like SNSXX. Specifics below)
* Employer Equity Plan (GSUs): \~$263.9k (Taxable)
* Roth IRA: \~$209.7k
* Single Stock (AAPL): \~$162k (560 shares, outside of AUM advisor portfolio)
* High-Yield Savings: \~$127.4k (Cash reserve)
* HSA: \~$21.9k
# Current Allocations
I’m pretty sure that the existing allocations are nonsensical… what I’m getting from looking into them is that it’s basically overly complex and trying to mimic the S&P500 but just making it look fancy for not really any reason, and with a 5 year lookback actually has performed worse than just the S&P? Maybe I’m off on any/all of this, so if y’all more experienced folks have feedback or perspective here, please let me know. 
|Ticker|Description|Shares|Price|Market Value|Portfolio Weight|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|ESGV|Vanguard ESG U.S. Stock ETF|1,665.0000|$132.24|$220,179.60|29.05%|
|VSGX|Vanguard ESG International Stock ETF|1,244.0000|$82.34|$102,430.96|13.51%|
|SCHR|Schwab Intermediate-Term Treasury ETF|2,454.0000|$24.66|$60,515.64|7.98%|
|QMOM|Alpha Architect U.S. Quantitative Momentum ETF|726.0000|$78.73|$57,157.98|7.54%|
|QVAL|Alpha Architect U.S. Quantitative Value ETF|998.0000|$55.45|$55,339.10|7.30%|
|FRDM|Freedom 100 Emerging Markets ETF|729.0000|$72.90|$53,144.10|7.01%|
|QUS|SPDR MSCI USA Quality ETF|239.0000|$186.8617|$44,659.95|5.89%|
|CAOS|Alpha Architect Tail Risk ETF|474.0000|$90.36|$42,830.64|5.65%|
|IMOM|Alpha Architect Int'l Quantitative Momentum ETF|656.0000|$43.275|$28,388.40|3.74%|
|IVAL|Alpha Architect Int'l Quantitative Value ETF|812.0000|$34.07|$27,664.84|3.65%|
|SNSXX|Schwab U.S. Treasury Money Fund|61,864.2000|$1.00|$61,864.20|8.16%|
# Future Potential Allocations
So looking at all of that, I think what I want to do is condense down the funds in the “Current Primary Allocations” to a Boglehead-ish setup and self-manage it… I’m looking at this allocation: 
* ESGV (Vanguard ESG U.S. Stock ETF) - 60% (U.S. equities)
* VSGX (Vanguard ESG International Stock ETF) - 20% (developed international)
* FRDM (Freedom 100 Emerging Markets ETF) - 10% (human-rights/freedom-weighted emerging markets)
* SNSXX - $100k emergency fund
* SCHR (Schwab Intermediate Treasury ETF) - Everything else from the last 10% not in SNSXX (fixed income floor)
I’d also keep my individual AAPL because I’ve had that for literal decades and the cost basis doesn’t make it logical to sell as far as I can tell (I’m 39 now and I’ve had that position since before I turned 15 as a gift from a family member). 
# Questions/Fears 😬
1. Overall Plan Review
1. Is it stupid to drop my advisor considering my setup? I feel like it’s not and my needs are pretty basic but if I’m way off on that I definitely want to know. 
2. Are the funds and allocations I’m looking to divest from and invest into logical? Anything look terrible or am I missing some very basic tenants or funds that I should be considering before I do this? 
3. If anyone has thoughts on my FIRE plan/etc and wants to reality check me, please do. I’m embarrassingly late to the game at figuring all of this out and I really want to get more of a handle on planning and owning my own financial education. 
2. Liquidating Existing Funds & Tax Impact
1. I can’t seem to find my cost basis in Schwab… I’m suspicious that there’s some sort of “simplified view” that I have access to b/c my account is managed. The Schwab helpcenter points to this which really bites; does anyone know if that’s true/how to get my cost basis now so I can plan out things a bit better? 
2. I have QUS, QMOM, QVAL, IMOM and IVAL from my AUM advisor that I want to divest from, but obviously it wouldn’t be wise to just blindly sell it all immediately. I was thinking that the right strategy would be to drop anything this year that I can take a loss on, as well as specifically all of CAOS b/c of the high fee. Then I was thinking I’d hold off on liquidating the rest until my Coast-FIRE transition in \~3 years when my income drops because that would be better for me in regards to capital gains/tax rate that I’d pay. Is that insane? Normal? Something else? 
3. Future Investing
1. Current Lump-Sum Purchase: I have $100k sitting in my HYSA that I usually invest in the summer (basically I just dump extra from my W2 income into the HYSA and then invest it 1-2 times a year via my advisor…. I know, I know.) With my plan to Coast-FIRE  in \~2-3 years, does it make sense to purchase into the boglehead ETFs in one lump sum or break it up into a few separate purchases to try and minimize risk? 
2. My current AUM advisor has me set up at Schwab, but it seems like they aren’t really set up well for individual investors who want to auto-buy ETFs. Any recommendations/advice on if it’s a wise idea to swap to Vanguard/Fidelity/somewhere else that’s better suited? Or am I overreacting to Schwab’s lack of ETF auto-purchasing because I just want it to be automated? 
3. In the future, is it best to just set up some automated ETF purchasing when I have funds in my cash-equivalent account? How do I even start thinking about something like this? How important is having a plan for this on day 1? 
4. Transitioning Out of the AUM Advisor: 
1. For those who made the jump from an AUM advisor to full DIY, how should I handle the logistics? 
2. Here’s what I’ve grabbed so far to pay attention to: 
1. Manually export/download all cost-basis records and purchase lots to a CSV before initiating the transfer out from management so nothing gets lost or delayed.
2. If I move to a new custodian (like Fidelity or Vanguard), call their transition desk directly to ensure it’s explicitly coded as "in-kind" so my ETFs, individual stocks, and cash move cleanly without accidental liquidations, and to ask about getting the outgoing ACAT fee waived. 
3. Turn off “cash sweeps” and turn on DRIP immediately post-transfer (I’m definitely not familiar with either of those and have them on my “to-do” list for reading up on over the next few weeks). 
UGH ok that’s really long and honestly really embarrassing to write out everything that I really don’t know/feel like I have no idea what I’m doing with. Thanks so much to anyone who takes the time to read this, provide thoughts/constructive critique/etc… I’m super happy even if folks just drop links or resources for me to self-educate with. Appreciate everyone who read this far and if there’s any other info I can provide that I missed, please let me know!