VXUS
Vanguard Total International Stock ETF
stock NASDAQ ETF

Two years ago, I knew nothing about investing. After stumbling across a YouTube video interview of John Bogle, a lightbulb went off. Now, I’m happy to say that I’m on the right path and looking forward to the future.
I’m 31 and have maxed out both mine and my wife’s Roth IRA’s the last two years. My goal is to do that every year. I’m currently all equities (90% SWTSX and 10% VXUS).
I was all-US until recently, but finally understood the importance of having some additional diversification.

If I want to use a core portfolio for portfoliomargin, will there be any distinction between using: VT vs (VTI/VXUS) vx (VTI/VEA/VWO)?
I'm interested in just buying, staying in the market, and leverring during opportunistic times. I may want to also sell options on this. Since I'm going to buy in big and hold for a lifetime, wondering if either-or choice should be preferred.

30/30/30/10 VTI/QQQ/XXX/VXUS. The XXX is a Global Tech fund. 10-30% was always my international target due to its 50 year performance against US. QQQ/XXX make up such a large portion because they grew that much, not because I continue to buy them.

Hi All!
Need some assistance figuring out best path moving forward. I currently max my 401k & backdoor Roth IRA. Now I’m focusing on my additional income & investing in a brokerage account through Vanguard.
It is currently a 60/40 split VTI/VXUS.
Unfortunately, Vanguard won’t allow for automatic purchasing/recurring purchases of ETFs. They *do* allow automatic purchases for mutual funds though.
I ultimately want to contribute $X from each paycheck (biweekly) into a 60/40 split. Right now, I am manually doing this & purchasing VTI/VXUS the day I receive my paycheck.
How significant of a difference would it be if I switched to MFs over ETFs? I know there are slight tax advantages (& expense benefits) to ETFs, but I feel (for my sanity), it’ll probably be easier to just automate it all.
Thanks in advance!

>but different countries have different levels of market regulation and therefore carry different levels of risk all else equal compared to the US market. The US market is not perfect but it's relatively transparent and doesn't carry certain risks such as government seizure of a company which the Chinese market is exposed to. You could say these risks are priced in, but the market can't price what it doesn't know
The market may not be perfectly priced in this, but it does account for it to some degree: a market cap weighted portfolio has basically just as much Apple alone as the entirety of China.
>As a result some feel international equities are overpriced and arbitrarily reduce their exposure using VXUS.
Emerging markets have much lower valuations than ex-US developed, which generally have lower valuations than the US.
>Also, many companies listed on the US market are international so VTI has some indirect international exposure.
That is not the international diversification that actually matters at all. What does matter is capturing how foreign stock markets behave, and no amount of KO or AAPL will do that for you.

100% US, because my 401(k) has very crappy passive investment options (FXAIX + FSMAX, and that’s it). Even our target date funds are actively managed.
I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere close to a proper VXUS allocation in an IRA or taxable, not with my current 401(k) balance, company match and maxed-out contributions.

About 0.2% from foreign tax credit is what I get. In rough numbers it is 2% dividend yield that is taxed around 10%.
The related question is whether you come out ahead by having the VXUS (or VEA+VWO) in a tax advantaged retirement account. You lose the foreign tax credit, but VXUS has a higher dividend rate and therefore you pay less US taxes if it is in a tax advantaged account. Which is better depends upon your tax rate. For very high tax rates, putting international in tax advantaged may be better.

If you're going to invest in QQQ you should probably do QQQM, literally the same fund but lower expense ratio.
I think VTI and VXUS are fine, I personally prefer that over VT since it gives you a little more flexibility on how much you want to allocate to US vs International

If you’re buying the haystack just buy it, so VT all the way. Then possibly add a domestic tilt due to currency risk. That works the same regardless of where you live. Splitting VT into VTI/VXUS has some potential tax advantages in a brokerage due to foreign tax credit but unless you’ve got a huge amount invested I don’t think it adds up to much.

If you want to lock in your gains then put it into a Boglehead plan.
Roughly 60% VTI and 40% VXUS. That is still aggressive as it is 100% equities but it completely removes idiosyncratic stock risk. That *massively* de-risks your portfolio.
You can also do that same thing and keep some portion of the Alphabet stock if you want to keep some concentration in the company. It is up to you to decide how much you would want to keep in Alphabet. I’d probably limit it to ~10% if you don’t have a good reason to keep more than that.

If you don't want to see a financial planner, here is what I would recommend. Start with putting two years worth of your expenses in a HYSA (guessing this would be $200K - $300K), then with the remaining, I'd allocate, based on your retirement time horizon, between QQQM, VTI, VXUS, SCHD, JPEQ, Treasuries/Bonds. If you want you could hold 5-10% back to play individual stocks. like GOOGL or MSFT, fine.

35% of my total portfolio is domestic stock (VTI) and 25% international (VXUS). So, about 58% of my equities are domestic and the rest international.

VTSAX AND VXUS

Yea you can use the same approach. You are diversifying by buying FZROX & FZILX and getting exposure to the total US + International markets.
Using mutual index funds has advantage of making it simpler to invest in dollar amounts. But it is less flexible if you want to say move your account from one custodian to another (Ex - Fidelity to Schwab). There's also transaction fee involved if you buy another company's fund.
ETF versions offer flexibility for such transfers. But you dont have convenience of investing in dollar amounts, unless they support fractional shares.
So if you want to continue using fund approach and your taxable brokerage account is at Fidelity, you can buy the same. Should be fine.
If it’s elsewhere check out the [wiki](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio) to find the relevant funds.
If you want to use ETF and diversify in the sense that you want to use a different company, do the same just find the corresponding ETF versions. For FZROX & FZILX it will be VTI/VXUS and you can do the same 80/20 split. There is also VT which is VTI + VXUS and takes care of managing this split

80+ VTI / VOO
20 VXUS

5% of my portfolio is International.
Switched from VXUS to VEA, since it focuses on developed countries only. So developed countries make 100% of that 5%. Will probably increase to 10% but 20% will be on developing.
Perhaps this approach is an overkill and VXUS is the sensible choice for a Boglehead. International markets are riskier, so I allow myself to speculate a little more.
It all boils down to what lets you sleep at night.

>Should I start purchasing shares of VT moving forward
To clarify, whichever path you choose, you can sell and rebalance funds within your IRA without penalty. No reason to keep funds you don't want in IRA. Not sure about 457.
>I've read here that you should do VXUS in taxable for foreign tax credit but that credit seems negligible
For me, the tax credit isn't significant. Maybe it is for folks with more money. Another reason some prefer VTI+VXUS over VT is control over international exposure. VT is the purist choice but different countries have different levels of market regulation and therefore carry different levels of risk all else equal compared to the US market. The US market is not perfect but it's relatively transparent and doesn't carry certain risks such as government seizure of a company which the Chinese market is exposed to. You could say these risks are priced in, but the market can't price what it doesn't know. As a result some feel international equities are overpriced and arbitrarily reduce their exposure using VXUS. Also, many companies listed on the US market are international so VTI has some indirect international exposure.

yeah they offer VT but VTI/VXUS is slightly cheaper because the VTI portion is 0.03% expense ratio.

If you hate the ARK funds, get rid of them. The two best performing ones this year are doing slightly better than QQQ and none are doing better than AAPL. Sell the ARKs and put it into QQQ (or XLK or IYW, and SOXX/SMH) and/or AAPL and the other top five giants... assuming you still want tech, but without extreme unnecessary added risk that the ARKs solicit.
All those different V funds are underperforming VOO/VTI except for VUG which is underperforming QQQ. Give yourself QQQ, APPL, VTI and some VXUS and you should be a lot happier than what you have now... but I'd also encourage you to check out the others I mentioned too.

I’m 27 years old crying in red trying to get my HSA positions in order. This year I gave birth and burned most of my funds there/didn’t manage positions at all due to being awfully tired while pregnant, but I have a strong desire for my HSA to bounce back and have an updated portfolio.
My positions are AAPL, ARKF, ARKG, ARKK, ARKQ, ARKW, QQQ, VHT, VIG, VOO, VTI, VUG, VXUS. I really hate that I got sold on Katie woods etfs and didn’t leave the sinking boat when I probably should’ve.
What do people do with their HSAs these days?