BND
Vanguard Total Bond Market
stock NASDAQ ETF

If you just want income from bonds, then you can put money into BND and never worry about the share price. The same goes for any bond or bond fund, really. The fund managers take care of buying new bonds to replace bonds that mature, and they send you the dividends (less expenses).
If you think you might want to sell your bond fund within a few years, then you might want a fund with shorter-duration bonds than BND holds. That's because long-duration bonds can lose more value if market interest rates rise. If the interest rate on 5-year bonds rises by 1%, then the price of existing bonds maturing in 5 years must be discounted by about 5% to give them an effective coupon similar to the market rate. If you were to sell the bond soon after market interest rates rose, the loss of the bond's value could be greater than the interest you earned while you held the bond. This happened in the real world: due to rising interest rates, the total return (share value plus dividends) of BND has not yet climbed to where the share value was five years ago.
That's why I use an ultrashort-duration bond fund (like VUSB) to hold money that I'm setting aside for a specific future use. The dividend rate varies frequently, but the share price is quite stable. When a fund (like BND) holds longer-duration bonds, the slower turnover of the portfolio keeps its dividend more stable, but changes in market interest rates can cause the share value to swing farther up or down.

I find bonds so confusing, and I seek simplicity. 
Is what you are saying is that I can hold BND long term and not worry so much about the share price moving too much?

VTI and VXUS in taxable with VT and BND in the IRA's.

3 fund portfolios are popular if you want diversification: US, international, and bonds. Some people do that with VOO, VXUS, and BND. Other investors use VT to get total world in one fund

I have never invested in individual stock.
I've had BND, VTSAX, VFIAX, FXAIX, and TSP C,I,G.
That is all.
I'm on track to easily retire at 60-62 with a pay raise.

A lot of people, myself included, are/were 100% equities until x years before retirement, at which point bonds start getting added in. If you can weather the volatility I can't see needing bonds more than 5-10 years out from retirement date.
I started adding BND 2 years ago. I am about 22% bonds now, and will be 25ish% at retirement in \~4 years.

Too many funds with overlap. Ex: VOO, SCHG & VUG all have a ton of overlap in terms of holding.
I’d also argue against holding BND at 19. You’re young and need the growth.

The age rule may have been mentioned on the wiki somewhere. Bogle himself liked it. But the wiki page should have a much more in depth explanation that explores the investor's need, ability, and desire to take risk which is really what age is serving as a (very poor) proxy for.
> So at my age I don’t necessarily need such a high percentage of bonds?
Again it's less about age and more about years to retirement, but yes you don't *need* that high of a bond allocation. There's nothing wrong with it, though, if you like having a less volatile portfolio. It just means there's a higher chance of having to work longer before you retire, which plenty of people are perfectly ok with because they enjoy their job.
> Would BND not be a great option for a lower bond %?
BND is a total bond fund so does include corporate bonds that have a higher equity correlation. It's also intermediate in duration. Both of those mean it's not the ideal choice for a small bond allocation, and I would at least recommend an intermediate treasury fund like VGIT as an almost strictly better choice.
That said, the difference between BND and VGIT is quite small in the grand scheme of things, so you could argue it actually just doesn't matter. I have a reasonably large portion of my retirement savings in a target date fund which includes some small allocation to corporate bonds, but I don't worry about it even if treasuries-only would have been slightly more optimal.
> How does one figure out their comfort level with bond %?
That's a hard question to answer. Some people would even say you can't know until you live through a crash. At the very least try to think about what it would feel like to lose some huge amount of money and how tempted you would be to sell early to try to avoid further losses. If you were invested recently, were you tempted to sell on liberation day because you thought the tariffs were going to make everything crash much more and wanted to get out early? Plenty of people thought similar things, but might not have if they'd lost less money.

Thank you very much for the insight. So at my age I don’t necessarily need such a high percentage of bonds? Would BND not be a great option for a lower bond %? How does one figure out their comfort level with bond %? I thought I had read the age rule in the Bogle wiki but may have seen that somewhere else. I definitely to educate myself more on bonds regardless!

Nothing wrong with a conservative investor to buy BND or BND and SGOV.

No one knows, less of all Bogleheads.
We buy the haystack. Let the universe figure out the rest.
VT is a reasonable haystack.
For some people the haystack may go a little more… so VT + BND. For some, the haystack should include other things even beyond stocks and bonds, so some people add a fund like KMLM (I think it’s unnecessary, but for the sake of inclusiveness).
But what none of us can tell you with any confidence is what the returns of any of these will be for the long run.

Bonds are really complicated and there's not much room for significant difference in performance so a broad fund with a low er like BND is best, or BNDW instead if you want to add international fixed income.
40% is probably overly conservative, but I don't like the age based "rules" of thumb. Your age is really a stand in for how much time until you'll want to start spending that money and assumes you'll be withdrawing at a sustainable rate. Basically mirroring what a TDF would do. Most TDFs will have you about 10% fixed income during your career when you're still contributing to your retirement savings and about 15 years from retirement will begin to increase so something like 60/40 or 50/50.
Whenever you're reading rules or suggestions it's important to think about the assumptions they're based on and the perspective they're written from. You might get seemingly contradictory comments, but one is talking about specifically retirement savings and another is talking about your overall savings which may include money for nearer term goals. When talking about asset allocation, especially when referencing age, the typical assumption is that you'll retire around 65 and you'll have enough to cover your expenses with a sustainable withdrawal rate around 4% at that time.

Generally for higher bond allocations you want more credit risk and less duration risk. So someone who's at 50/50, for example, wants a total bond fund like BND and perhaps even a small allocation to high yield bonds (admittedly junk bonds are a hard sell to someone so conservative that they're down to 50% stocks, so maybe that's never good advice in practice, but we're speaking theoretically).
On the other hand, someone who has only a small bond allocation wants their bonds to be as uncorrelated with their equities as possible (i.e. low to zero credit risk) and wants the bonds themselves to be as volatile as possible to take as much advantage of their uncorrelated nature as possible (which means higher duration). A lot of people say you should use long term treasuries if you're at 20% bonds or under, and it's generally supported by backtests. There are even more extreme funds like EDV, though for funds like that you should be very sure you want them and will stick with them through the bad times.
Of course, even long term treasuries can be volatile enough to defeat the purpose for some investors, since they're trying to get more security after all. An intermediate treasury fund would be a totally reasonable option if you have a low bond allocation but you don't think long duration is for you.
Age-based heuristics like "age in bonds" or "age - 20 in bonds" are pretty terrible imo. Generally I would say people more than 10 years away from retirement have their bond allocation determined primarily by what is most comfortable for them, which could be as low as zero or could be 40% like you said if that's the return profile you're after. It's hard for us to give you advice on this part. Then once you're less than 10 years from retirement that's when a reasonable bond allocation starts to become necessary.

I use SGOV as a glorified HYSA/Money Market as my 6 month "cash" Emergency Fund within my brokerage, as it's mostly state tax free based on being invested in short term treasuries come tax time, which in my case I save about 4.5% towards State Tax vs having to pay for it in a Money Market or HYSA. Doing a quick comparison on the [TotalReturns.com](http://TotalReturns.com) website, SGOV actually appears to do alot better and is less volatile than BND, which imo is exactly the buffer everyone should be looking for in these type of investments.

I have VXUS and BND in an IRA because they shed a lot of dividends (great) that I don’t have to then pay tax on now while I’m earning (even better). It’s the bucket strategy of allocation. Taxable has VTI

You can use BND, BNDW or GOVT. They’re going to give you pretty similar results. The equivalent to VT, including US and foreign bonds, would be BNDW.
Regarding how much, it would depend on your risk tolerance and your risk capacity. People usually overestimate their risk tolerance so I’d prefer to be cautious.

Hello! I've been browsing around the forum over the past few months now. Thinking it's about time to actually post something and get some skin in the game. Hehe.
I am hoping to get some thoughts regarding asset allocation within taxable accounts. I've maxed out my tax-advantaged contributions (Traditional 401(k), Keogh, HSA through the company partnership I work with as well as a pension plan that I become vested in after 10 years). I'm unable to contribute to a Roth IRA plan due to income. My tax-advantaged accounts are currently all placed in Vanguard Target Date funds.
I'm currently 37 years old with a foreseeably stable job/income. Only debt I have is my mortgage. I have an emergency fund tucked away in a HYSA. Honestly also want to thank forums like this for even getting me thinking more seriously about finances.
That being said, the next frontier seems to be taxable investment accounts, which I have little (really no) experience in. I opened a Schwab investor checking/brokerage account a few months ago (since I like their no ATM fees). Have about 10K sitting in it. I have been reading into 3 fund portfolios with a mixture of stocks and bonds but I'm wondering if it makes more sense to do all stock ETFs for my taxable accounts given my age and current tax-advantaged contributions.
Like maybe 60% VTI and 40% VXUS
Or something with Schwab like 60% SCHB, 30% SCHF with the remaining 10% split between SCHE and SCHC for added exposure to emerging markets and international small cap stocks
Or would having some bond allocation like BND or SCHZ still be advisable?
I recognize that there's no ideal allocation and only time will tell how comfortable I am with market volatility. Guess I'm just trying to get myself out of this analysis paralysis that I keep finding myself in. Hehe.

You could make it even simpler just goin VT/BND in a split that makes sense for where you are in life / your risk tolerance. VT is basically VTI/VXUS if you hold them at \~60/40 currently.

To start with I don't like BND, so let's get that out of the way. I see no current use for investment-grade corporate bonds because the spread against Treasuries is minimal and you don't get the favorable tax treatment.
For me personally it's Treasuries and High Yield Corporate.
I like ETFs because with SCYB, as an example, it's got like 3,000 holdings. So your exposure to default risk is a lot less. If 10% of the holdings default (which would be a catastrophic event) you're only down 10% in NAV in theory and you still have contractual income.
I have large positions in FALN and SCYB. They give good yield, NAV is fairly stable, and they're cheap. SCYB is 3bps expense ratio.
>Is a BOND ETF more volatile?
Yes, compared to a bond that fully matures and pays on-time. But a bond ETF is less volatile than say buying 2 corporate bonds and one of them either defaults or screws you in some pre-BK negotiation.
SCYB yield is on the low side now because of the price appreciation, but it was close to 8% for a while, which is a very nice return when you think about it. You've got a legally-binding 8% return no matter what the market does, which is a good way to buy down your risk in a portfolio.
Something like 30-40% of my portfolio is bonds. Treasuries and high yield.

BND is an intermediate term, broad, market-weighted fund. It has a decently low expense ratio of 0.03%. I believe BND is commonly used as a one size fits all bond fund as a diversification from your equity holdings (such as VT)
You can go down a huge rabbit hole exploring the different types of bonds and bond funds that are available, but this one seems at least reasonable for a one size fits all holding (i.e. if you only want one bond fund this probably isn't bad)