Barista
Midfield
I’ve never used target date funds, I always chose my own separate equity and bond funds/ETFs.So if you did have a cash buffer or were prepared to be flexible with your retirement age - why would you stick with default ‘target age’ fund that your employer puts you in which dips out or equities automatically and produces a poor return in the last few years of your working life.
I assume that individually you would also stick with the same level of risk with fund once retired.
Am I missing something here?
I recently checked through some of my companies L&G options and if you were in the target date 2045-2050 fund - the performance of that was lower than the FTSE100 which I found surprising.
I knew I wanted the option to retire when I reached 55, so from about 50 onwards I gradually moved from about 80% equities vs bonds to around 55:45 when I gave up work. The benefit of having separate equity and bond funds is that when you need to liquidate to cash you can decide to to sell down one or the other. E.g. if equities crashed, bonds may have gone up in value so rather than selling equities you could sell some bonds. Alternatively if your equities have done well as they probably have over the last few years, you could decide to bank some of your gains. This is not as easy with target date funds as when you sell some you are selling both equities and bonds as they are combined in a single fund.
There’s nothing wrong with target date funds for people who are not so interested in managing their own pensions, but for me I enjoy it as a hobby.
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