Schwab private client, as well as Vanguard, caution me about my approach, too. I’m way too risky, and heavily in volatile tech stocks.
Both make that assessment looking only at the assets they have in their respective institutions.
They fail to consider the tremendous fixed income portion of my portfolio - two USN pensions, with a third government pension when my wife retires in a couple years. I can be risky, because those checks roll in each month and I don’t need the portfolio to eat, or keep a roof over my head.
My financial adviser is much more balanced. At our last meeting, he laughed out loud when I said, we were wondering if we could afford a house of roughly double the value of our present house. Dude! You guys are so far ahead of where you need to be!
Which was gratifying to hear.
Let me share one small piece of that success: my IRA experience from 30 years ago.
30 years ago, there were no Roths. As a USN officer, there was no 401(k). IRA contributions were maxed at $2,000/year. They were not deductible if your W-2, like mine, had the “pension” box checked.
So, I did the only thing I could - I invested $166/month, and added $8 during tax time, all after tax, to meet the max allowable IRA contribution. Couldn’t do any more.
I split the amount between T. Rowe Price and Vanguard.
I did that for seven years. Not a lot of money in today’s dollars, but a big hit for a young family with kids at home on a modest military paycheck. Over the next few decades, they grew. Some years saw big losses. Some years, big gains. I let them ride.
The current balance on those two IRAs, together, is about twenty time what I put in back then. Enough to buy my first house three times over.
It‘s not the plan, or investment option, per se, that was important, it was getting in early, as best I could, and staying the course. I had no other option but a $2,000 non-deductible IRA. So that’s what I did. The gains are the result of doing it when I was young.