Going all in for VTI??

[sophie]

If you have a lot of money and don't want to put it into the PP all at once, it's fine to divide it into aliquots and buy into all 4 assets at regular intervals, e.g. monthly.  That gets expensive with gold so you might want to buy that less often, e.g. every 3 months.

Could you explain why you would want to buy cash, stocks & bonds e.g. monthly and gold e.g. once every three months?

Don't follow your comment that dollar cost averaging gets expensive with gold or why you would delay buying that particular asset over the other three.

It's just because of the investment fees.  If you are buying physical gold, the cost to buy (shipping + markup) is high.  If you are buying ETF gold, you are going to incur commission fees on each purchase unless you're at Schwab and can buy SGOL commission-free.  Whereas at pretty much every major brokerage you can buy some form of cash, stocks, and bonds commission-free.

It's not quite "dollar-cost averaging" to stage your PP conversion, but it's certainly a way to make you more comfortable with the process.

And...pssst....buy that minimum 15% stocks asap.  Is there a reason why you stayed away from stocks?  That's usually everyone's favorite asset.  In the PP, it is a critical counterbalance to gold and bonds, which are the universal "panic" assets.

[rickb]

And...pssst....buy that minimum 15% stocks asap.  Is there a reason why you stayed away from stocks?  That's usually everyone's favorite asset.  In the PP, it is a critical counterbalance to gold and bonds, which are the universal "panic" assets.

My guess is that it's because stocks are at an all time high.

The bottom line is that whenever you start a PP, you're going to have to hold your nose when buying something.  As the late Peter (not William) Bernstein said: "If you are comfortable with everything you own, you're not properly diversified."

The point is that your notions of what MUST go up (from wherever it is) and what MUST go down (from wherever it is) are not necessarily right (maybe 50-50 if you're an absolute investing genius). 

Will the stock market crash sometime in the future?  Absolutely.  But it might not be tomorrow, or within the next week, or within the next month, or even in the next year.

Will the stock market double or triple or quadruple from where it is now before it crashes?  Nobody knows.

Many people have been predicting the bond market will crash - for at least the last three years (if not longer).  In 2011, no less a luminary than Bill Gross (perhaps the smartest bond manager on the planet) made a big bet against US Treasuries - predicting interest rates would rise.  Instead, they fell.

See Browne's golden rule #4: ''No one can predict the future.''  That includes YOU.

[LC475]

My advice is to just go all-in, buy VTI, and move on. KISS. 

I agree, with a variant: if you will be buying more than, say, $10,000, split the stock portion between two funds with $5,000 in each.  The funds should be from different companies.  This gives you maximum safety and even more diversification for those "just in case" scenarios.