[IdealFugacity]

Got the list of the funds available for 401(k) today. Good stuff, notably VIIIX, VIDMX, and VSCIX, all which seem to be lower ER variations on the Investor share funds I was looking at respectively large cap, int'l, and small cap.

Vanguard said they won't waive the minimum if I set up regular deposits, so if REITs are involved at all when i decide upon my portfolio allocation (reading Random Walk down Wall St and All About Asset Allocation soon as the library processes them into the catalog), my portfolio will be way out of whack for the first few years as I set up Roth IRA in chunks of each fund.

Currently, if I use my first year to invest 9% of salary in 401k (match is only 50% up to 7% i found for a total of 12.5%), and another $3k in Roth (min deposit into REIT. Add another grand if I can put it together, add a few more % pts to REIT listed below), I could end up with a mix of 30% Large-cap, 22% small cap, 33% REIT, and 15% international (w/o accounting for varying rates of return)

Like i said, it'll be out of whack due to the minimum deposit thing, I'll be adding 3-4k a year to one of the 4 categories again in the roth the year after that, repeat for 2 more years to have all 4 available for future investing in as small or large amounts as I like]

that'd be about 16% of my first yr pre-tax income.

Edit: I arrived at the %s by setting up an excel sheet with a desired allocation level, then putting in dollar amounts for how much I'll be putting into 401k and 3k into roth specifically designated to REIT, then using the solver function to minimize differences between desired and real allocation. <3 excel