Choosing your investments for your 401(k) is an intimidating part of your financial planning. When I ask clients what strategy they used to choose their investments is “I picked the investments that had the highest returns” or “I just did the default”. Having an investment blueprint is crucial in grounding your investment decisions. Without a well thought out investment process, you will be more likely to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. I hope the Level Up Investment Blueprint Calculator helps you build a portfolio you are confident in.

This calculator provides a basic blueprint for how I analyze and choose investments for my clients 401(k)s.

Purpose

Use the investment blueprint calculator to build an allocation for your investments that fit your long-term goals.

Calculator Highlights

• Shows visual of asset class diversification
• Calculates weighted expense ratio of your portfolio
• Highlights important factors of investment decisions (risk vs. reward)
• Ability to consolidate investment information for comparison
• Confirm investment allocation equals 100%

Steps to Choosing Your 401(k) Investments

1. Determine the Outline of Investment Policy. What return is needed to reach your goals? How much risk are you comfortable with? If those don’t match, where do you compromise? This gives us an outline of your basic portfolio outline.
2. Research Investment Options. Next you can use your portfolio outline to guide your investment research. I review the following: Expense Ratio, Historical Return, and Historical Volatility. I recommend www.morningstar.com for your investment research.
3. Build Your Investment Portfolio. Using the calculator you can establish the percentage of your portfolio for each investment choice. Using the expense ratio and the allocation for each investment and the calculator will show you the weighted expense ratio.
4. Review Quarterly and Rebalance. If your investments are diversified, that means that some investments will go up faster than others and at times some investments may fall faster than others. Reviewing investments and rebalancing regularly is an important part of investment management.

Related strategy guide: Should I Use Fidelity’s Brokeragelink

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