The FIRE Movement – Is It For You?

Your first thought, spend it! But how? Is it the house project you and your spouse have been discussing for the last several months? Should you pay down your credit card balance? Go on a trip? Wait, you’re excited about the refund, but in retrospect you should have adjusted your allowances so that you didn’t give the government an interest free loan over the course of the last twelve months. With that said, should you fire your accountant? Well, it’s too late now. Take a moment, and think through the best use of this money? What are your short-term priorities? How do those priorities align or even conflict with other priorities that are further down the road? Should the refund have just one focus?

Let’s first sort through what we need to consider. Is this refund enough to actually complete the house project or will you actually have to put the remaining balance of the project on a credit card? Do you have your three to six months of savings in your emergency fund? What are the interest rates of your current credit cards? What is the current state of the market? Are you comfortable with market risk if you were to invest your refund? How secure is your current career? How variable is your current income? These are significant questions and require more diligence than, quickly hiring the contractor to install heated floors in that master bathroom. Give some intentional thought to this prior to your refund arriving in your bank account. Meet with a Certified Financial Planner to not only consult about what to do with your tax refund, but also your current planning situation and existing investment accounts and risk management plan.

Prior to the receipt of your tax refund, create a pie chart, sort through your most important priorities and time frames, then allocate accordingly, without heavily weighting one priority over the next. Make your refund go further. Start with savings, then, make a larger credit card payment than the monthly minimum if a balance exists, assuming the interest is in the teens. Tuck a portion into the stock market. If you anticipate needing or wanting the money prior to retirement, establish or contribute a portion of the refund to a non-retirement investment account. Only after taking these steps should you allocate funds to a home project. Why? You have now considered long-term planning first, then addressed short term priorities. Life happens, homes need upgrades, and travel is always an option. These plans will ALWAYS be available and present. Retirement and long-term planning will not happen, if you don’t plan now. Meet with a Certified Financial Planner to sort through what to do with your tax refund. Finally, discuss this with your CPA in preparation for next year’s taxes to sort through how you can limit the refund and have more cash available over the course of the year.

In 2001, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted a new rule to supposedly prohibit mutual fund names that may mislead investors about a fund’s investments and risks. The rule required a fund with a name suggesting that the fund focuses on a particular type of investment (e.g., “stocks” or “bonds”) to invest at least 80% of its assets accordingly. Previously, funds were subject to a 65% investment requirement.

This rule resulted in many funds changing their names, changing their investments, or both. In general, things are better now than they were before the 2001 rule. However, today’s mutual fund names and categories can still be confusing and/or misleading.

Blurred Boundaries

For example, let’s look at names that connote where the fund buys its investments. These names usually contain words like “Domestic,” “International,” “Global,” and “World.” Imagine a Domestic Large-Cap fund, whose name suggests it buys large, U.S. companies. But if the fund owns mostly companies in the S&P 500 Index, those companies might be generating up to 50% of their revenues outside of the U.S. The large multinational firm might be based in the U.S. but do business in countries all around the world. The opposite may be true of funds with “Global” or “World” in their name; those companies based in foreign countries may be deriving some or all of their revenue from dealings with the U.S.

Undefined Jargon

Another confusing category of funds is called “smart beta”. Investopedia defines Beta this way1:

“Beta is a measure of the volatility, or systematic risk, of a security or a portfolio in comparison to the market as a whole. Beta is used in the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), which calculates the expected return of an asset based on its beta and expected market returns.”

Got that? Let’s assume you totally understand beta and CAPM. So, what is “smart” beta? If beta is a measure of volatility, then a reasonable person might assume that “smart beta” is a more intelligent measure of volatility, right? Let’s see if the definition of smart beta contains the word “volatility.”

Investopedia defines smart beta this way2:

The goal of smart beta is to obtain alpha, lower risk or increase diversification at a cost lower than traditional active management and marginally higher than straight index investing. It seeks the best construction of an optimally diversified portfolio. In effect, smart beta is a combination of efficient-market hypothesis and value investing. Smart beta defines a set of investment strategies that emphasize the use of alternative index construction rules to traditional market capitalization-based indices. Smart beta emphasizes capturing investment factors or market inefficiencies in a rules-based and transparent way. The increased popularity of smart beta is linked to a desire for portfolio risk management and diversification along factor dimensions, as well as seeking to enhance risk-adjusted returns above cap-weighted indices.

Hmm. Not a single mention of volatility. Are you confused yet?

Growth, Aggressive Growth, Capital Appreciation, Equity Income

Growth sounds good, but how is it different from capital appreciation? Don’t they mean the same thing? Does aggressive mean faster, riskier, meaner, or something else? Equity income funds are supposed to be stocks that pay dividends, right? So, what category do you think the Dividend Growth Small & Mid-Cap Fund3 is? It has both “dividend” and “growth” in its name, but are they separate or together? Does the fund invest in companies whose dividends are growing, or does it invest in growth companies that also pay dividends? An investor would need to read the fund’s prospectus to find out for sure. I’m sure all good investors thoroughly read those prospectuses from cover to cover.

Reporting Problem

The SEC requires mutual funds to report complete lists of their holdings on a quarterly basis. So, the manager of the hypothetical Blah-Blah Domestic Large Cap Fund could buy a bunch of foreign small-cap stocks on January 1 and hold them until March 28. Then, the manager could sell them and replace them with domestic large-cap stocks, and report on March 31 that the fund was properly holding domestic large cap stocks as required. On April 1, the manager could buy back the foreign small cap stocks and repeat that process every quarter.

Conclusion

Mutual fund names and categories are more informative than they used to be, but they can still be quite confusing or misleading. Investors (and advisors) need to do their due diligence, fully read those prospectuses, and closely follow the actions of the fund managers. Is your advisor recommending mutual funds? Are they confident of what’s really in those funds? Are you? If you have any questions about the mutual funds in your portfolio, email me at steve.hartel@trilogyfs.com and I if I can’t answer your question, I will find someone who can.

1. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/beta.asp
2. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/smart-beta.asp