Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Mine is a bit extreme. I'm currently at approximately 60% equities and 40% cash/short term investments. I'm expecting the market to drop and want some liquidity to catch some deals if they crop up.
I don't care for precious metals and due to my military pension, I don't need a bond allocation. So I'm an outlier.

@Robert Muir

I never thought of using my future pension as a "bond" allocation, but it makes sense. Thanks for giving me something to mull over.

I am not in the markets at all. I sold those on retirement, and am invested in the four rental properties I am associated with. These cash flows provide all living expenses. Wife and I receive cash from retirement pensions (School and Military), and we are both receiving social security. We have some IRA activity with the cash, and a couple other small investments. I am beginning to see that I am keeping too much cash, as I am not getting above 3 percent at best. However I am not too interested in looking at more investments at this time. I am more interested in tax shelters, and will go that way as time progresses.

It all depends on how you look at it, so I'll give an overview and then zero in on where the effort is going:
Home equity: 17% (17% of total holdings, >20% equity)

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Pension: 24% - no investment choices available, yields 8%

401K-like-thing that replaced the pension: 11% - no investment choices, 6% of pretax

IRAs: 10% - self-directed dividend equities

Roth IRA: 9% - self-directed dividend equities

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Taxable: 29% - self-directed dividend equities

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The Taxable portfolio is where the action is, as it's now growing 6x or 7x faster than retirement section.
Inside the Taxable portfolio there are a dozen or so equities:

Cash - 8.5%

Bonds & bond funds - 16.0%

Stable dividend equities - 10.2%

Dividend growth equities - 40.3% (matches or beats inflation)

Variable dividend equities - 25.0%
The Taxable portfolio currently yields over 7%. My reallocation goals are to increase "Dividend growth" to >50% and reduce "Variable dividend" to <10%. The end result should be a portfolio that increases income at a pace well above inflation, yet is stable enough that it will withstand significant market collapse. After analyzing the Taxable portfolio, I realized the current income is too likely to fluctuate, which is what prompted me to create a balance.

I don't know the break down per se, but at least 20k cash, and the rest in investment accounts of various types (see journal - which I need to update too, sigh)
Close to 100k in various non-cash investments

16% cash

8% precious metals

1% premium bonds (a UK thing, like a perpetual lottery ticket with 100% capital guarantee - for that 'random' element )

2.5% equities (just started and will be focus of savings going forward)

25% private pension (no more contributions going in)

45% life assurance about to mature

1% peer-to-peer lending

A garden ... priceless
- I haven't done a check-sum, if it's not 100%, bite me
I don't count property - this is a place to live, not a financial asset, IMHO. 90% equity, to be 100% when life assurance matures, and "The Great Re-balancing" can begin
My rationale:

cash - just in case

PMs - just in case something WAY more serious happens

PBs - well, you never know

equities - focusing on high dividend yields to build an income stream, lot of work yet to do (and yes, I did buy BP at the 14 year low )

pensions - I was young and drank the KoolAid

life assurance - at least it pays out before the pensions

P2P lending - I like the idea, cuts out the middleman (the banksters), risky and rewarding
Most of the cash and equities are tax-sheltered and I have a couple of trivial income streams now which go purely into investments. Mortgage is the only debt, and that is covered.
Watching that 'number' - passive income vs actual expenses. A way to go yet, I might be able to retire early by retirement age Mind you, I managed to avoid (needing to) work for quite a few years when I was younger, and it was worth it...

55% dividend yielding stocks

(REITs, financials, telecons, energy)

36% cash / equivalents

09% municipal bonds (ETFs)
I don't have an explicit asset allocation strategy, but I am aiming to increase the municipal bond %, as well as start a precious metals position down the line...not even close to doing so now.

I have a chunk in a 4x25 permanent portfolio and a chunk in a 70/30 total world stock / total bond portfolio. I want to merge them into one portfolio to rule them all, but first I have more mulling to do.

401k

Dodge & Cox 10%

Dodge & Cox International 20%

Vangaurd 500 50%

Columbia small cap 10%

Tweedy Browne 10%

Note: I recently transferred half of the above to this during a rebalance in an attempt to time the market (Well Fargo Stable Return 50%) Today was not a good day to make me feel savy, but I am confident the future is bleak.
Roth IRA

Index for all us stocks 33%

Index for all non us stocks 33%

Index for REIT 33%
I have about another 20% of the amount above in cash which is always growing that I will eventually buy stocks with in a taxable account.
Eventually, I look to do a 401k Rollover into an IRA to have better control.

@ The Dude - LOL, whoever believes in efficient market theory needs to ask themselves what was different about today compared to yesterday that would be worth a 3% jump in the indexes! And if the trend reverts to the mean, then which mean are we trending to when there's a 3% discontinuity?

I say a jump of 3 IQ points in the collective intelligence! Seeing that my stocks went up today, I for one feel much smarter already.

@George
LOL. The president was on TV. Isn't that normally worth 3%:) After all, according my recent post in "higher taxes" we just recently got done working for the government this year!

Currently: 29% cash (some in CDs but mostly dry powder for bargain shopping), 31% bonds (munis/TIPS/corporates), 34% stocks (lots of dividend payers), 6% alternative investments (real estate, commodities, precious metals).

"whoever believes in efficient market theory needs to ask themselves what was different about today compared to yesterday that would be worth a 3% jump in the indexes!"
Investor sentiment changes in response to news. From cnn: "Stocks rallied right out of the gate as investors welcomed a rebound in Chinese manufacturing and robust economic growth in Australia. The advance kicked into high gear following an unexpectedly strong report on U.S. manufacturing activity."

My portfolio is roughly 10% cash, 10% bonds, 80% equity. The equity portion is further divided into
10% US Large Caps

15% US Large Cap Value

10% US small cap

15% US small cap value

10% US Reit
10% Foreign large cap

10% Foreign large cap value

10% Foreign small cap

10% emerging markets
All in a variety of low cost index fund and ETFs from vanguard and iShares. Have absolutely no complaints about performance (even in this past decade).

Mostly cash, some PM.

Mulling day and night.

My allocation is 95% equities and 5% cash for expenses. Equities are Asian small cap value stocks.

I have had this allocation for the last 5 years.

I've been at 0 percent stocks since the Summer of 1996. My money is in TIPS and IBonds paying 3.5 percent real. I am waiting for stock valuations to return to reasonable levels or something lower than that before getting back into stocks.
Rob

Using living expenses as a basis I have:
3 years cash

6 years investments (70/30 stock/bond)
This means I have 9 years saved or 36% of a goal of 25 years (or 25% if I target 35 years).

@Carlos - I love how you put it in 'years'!