How to build a portfolio you don’t have to babysit

Key Points

• Define your portfolio’s asset allocation as its “true north,” using a target-date fund for a truly hands-off approach or customizing your mix based on risk capacity and tolerance.
• Streamline your holdings by consolidating redundant accounts—such as multiple IRAs or stray 401(k)s—while respecting tax and ownership constraints.
• Populate your portfolio with low-cost, well-diversified building blocks like total-market index funds or ETFs, plus simple cash-management vehicles (e.g., online savings or money-market funds).
• Document an annual maintenance regimen via an investment policy statement to guide regular reviews, distribution planning, and withdrawal strategies in retirement.

If you’re a do-it-yourself investor aiming to build a “no babysitter required” portfolio, here are the key steps to take.

Step 1: Find your portfolio’s true north

Give due consideration to your asset allocation. That decision will have the biggest impact on how your portfolio behaves in the future.

The tricky part about asset allocation, even a hands-off approach, is that the “right” asset allocation is often a moving target as retirement approaches.

Target-date funds elegantly address this issue by transitioning to a more conservative stance as the years go by. If you’re OK with an asset allocation that’s not necessarily customized to your particular situation, your quest for a low- or no-maintenance portfolio could begin and end with a good-quality target-date fund.

If you’d like to have more control over your asset allocation, think through your risk capacity and risk tolerance.

Target-date funds’ asset allocations can be a decent starting point when deciding how to allocate assets depending on life stage. You can also tailor your mix of aggressive and conservative investments, which is particularly valuable if you’re retired and actively spending from your portfolio.

Also give some thought to how your asset allocation will change over time. A good-quality target-date fund can help you visualize your portfolio’s glide path.

Step 2: Eliminate redundant accounts

If your aim is to reduce complexity and oversight in your portfolio, you can slim down your number of accounts. Multiple rollover IRAs from previous employers, as well as straggler 401(k) assets, can create unnecessary complexity.

Just remember that the consolidation process can only go so far because some of your accounts will need to remain distinct for tax purposes.

You can combine multiple IRAs in your name, for example, but you won’t typically be able to combine your 401(k) with those IRAs unless you’ve retired or left your employer. Taxable nonretirement assets will need to remain distinct from IRAs and company retirement plans.

If you and your spouse each have assets in your own names, those accounts will need to remain distinct, too.

Step 3: Identify low-cost, well-diversified building blocks

Now, you can turn your attention to identifying the building blocks to populate the portfolio(s).

For your long-term investments, broad “total market” index funds and exchange-traded funds are the lowest-maintenance choices. The best aspect of these products is that a single fund will provide all (or almost all) of the exposure you need to a given asset class.

One fork in the road is whether to obtain your total market exposure via a traditional index fund or exchange-traded fund.

For your cash holdings, focus on products that are low-cost, well-diversified, and low-maintenance, like online savings accounts and money market mutual funds.

Step 4: Document your maintenance regimen

If you’ve followed the steps above, a thorough annual review should be enough.

This will be essential if you’re already retired because you’ll need to figure out how to extract cash for living expenses from your portfolio, and to take required minimum distributions from your tax-deferred accounts once you hit age 73.

I like the idea of using an investment policy statement that documents the basic outlines of your portfolio, how often you’ll check on your portfolio, and how you’ll do it.

If you’re retired, maintaining your portfolio will be a bit more complicated: Not only will you need to determine where you’ll go for cash to meet your living expenses, but you’ll also have to ensure that your portfolio withdrawals aren’t so rich that you risk early depletion of your portfolio. A retirement policy statement can help ensure that you’re thinking through and documenting all of these issues.

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This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance

Christine Benz is director of personal finance and retirement planning at Morningstar.