Has the FIRE Formula Changed? Why 100% Index Funds Isn’t the Answer
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Everyone in the FIRE community talks about throwing money into an index fund like it's the holy grail of investing. Today, we're going to challenge that conventional wisdom. And who better to talk about this than somebody who actually went against the grain? Scott literally looked at his index portfolio and said, maybe this isn't the optimal strategy for me anymore.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my VTSAX fan co-host, Scott Trench. Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here and ready to chill with you. What an inside fire joke there. VTSAX and chill. All right. BiggerPockets has a goal of creating 1 million millionaires. You are in the right place if you want to get your financial house in order because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone.

no matter when or where you're starting or how deeply trapped in the middle-class trap with an index fund-only portfolio you are. Ooh, Scott, that was a little deep already. Let's jump right into it. I am on the opposite side of you with the VTSAX trap that you alluded to. Starting off this year, you made a pivot in your portfolio. What change are you making and why are you making this change? I looked up and after 10...

11 years in this fire journey realized that, you know, while I have some real estate, my financial portfolio outside of my house, for example, is, was essentially 80% in index funds.

I am not comfortable with an allocation like that at this point in my life. I would be very comfortable with that or 100% concentration if I was just starting out in year one of accumulation for the long-term value that index funds provide. But in what is a portfolio beyond that which I initially set out to achieve at this point, I'm not going to have so much as a percentage of my wealth in 2021.

stock market index funds, passively managed stock market index funds. So I sold 40% of my position and I'm reallocating that to a rental property that you are actually helping me buy, Mindy. Yes. And that was a leading question, Scott. I know where you're going with your portfolio. Just as you know where I'm going with mine, because this is not the first time we've had this conversation. I want to point out that

that you and I are in different phases of life. I am almost 20 years older than you. My children, I have a child who is graduating high school this year. You are still having babies. So we have a different financial outlook over the next 20 years of our lives. In 20 years, I'm going to be 72 in 20 years. You're going to be

50 something. 54. Yeah. I'm getting up there, Mindy. 54. Yeah. Wow. I forgot you had a birthday. 54. You're 34. So yeah, we're in different positions of our life and I don't need my portfolio to perform the same way that you need your portfolio to perform. Also,

I've been through downturns and the downturn that is coming up that has been preached about since what the last downturn in 2008, it kind of started recovering in 12 or 13. So 14 is when people started predicting the next downturn. I've been through several and they don't scare me.

So I am continuing to keep my money in the stock market. Yeah. Well, let me be very clear. I am not predicting a market crash. I am not saying 2025 will have a market crash. It may have a crash. I don't know. I am saying that I cannot, I do not want to experience a market crash with that large of my portfolio.

And I know that two to three times per lifetime, statistically in American history at least, U.S. stocks will crash 50% or more from their peak pricing. And in multiple of those cases, it has taken 10 years or more

for them to recover to the previous levels of pricing. So it could be that we are at the peak pricing for the stock market right now, we're very close to it, and that it will not return to current levels for

for 10 more years. Now, if I'm thinking 30 or 50 years out, then I believe that whatever I have in stocks will continue to accrete at an 8% to 10% compound annual growth rate over a very long period of time, 30, 40, 50 years. And that is a very effective way to build wealth. And I am not totally abandoning an index fund portfolio. I'm selling 40% of the index fund portfolio because I cannot handle that concept here.

And I will be lying if I didn't say that the current pricing of the market is also influencing that decision. Right now, as of when we're recording this, the market is trading at a 29 times price to earnings ratio. Now, I've actually had multiple people reach out and say, Scott, I looked it up on Google, and it's actually trading at 26 times price to earnings ratio. Well, Google's first result, for whatever reason, it'll probably change right after this podcast, is showing the price to earnings ratio from September 2014, people. Okay? If you look at the charts for the current...

It's just like a snippet from AI or whatever that's coming up there. But if you actually look at the charts of where it's trading at, it's trading at about 29 times price to earnings right now as of January 30th, 2025. And it's bounced up around between 29 and 30 times throughout the month of January. It'll probably go higher. The stock market on average generally tends to go up. I am just not...

I'm not willing to experience or put at risk that portion of my portfolio at this stage in my financial journey in a position where I could lose.

half or a huge chunk of it and take a decade to recover from. So Scott, what I'm hearing you say is that you are looking at your portfolio. I like that you're looking at your portfolio. You are taking into consideration all of these different factors and you're making a decision based on information that you have now and your opinion of this information. You're not getting your information off of TikTok where some guys like, oh my goodness,

the sky's falling and Scott's like, well, that one guy on TikTok said it was, so I better sell. Like you're taking this information, you're thinking about it. Anybody who has ever listened to you knows how cerebral you are and how much you think about things. So this is not a spur of the moment decision, even though it may seem like it to somebody. This is something you've been thinking about for a long time. I know a lot of people who invest in the stock market who are like, what's a P.E. ratio? And that's fine. You don't have to know what a P.E. ratio is.

But you can't make decisions based on a P.E. ratio if you don't know what a P.E. ratio is. So you do. I like that you're thinking about this. I think it's a great decision for you because you've thought about it, because you have rental property experience, and your real estate is essentially acting like a bond here.

in a similar way, but in a way that you are very experienced with. This property, because I am helping you buy it, I'm a privy to all of the numbers, you're getting a great deal on a property. You're getting a great deal on a property that's going to be a cash-flowing property for you from day one. So you're not just...

oh, well, I have to sell because the P.E. ratio is too high, even though I don't know what a P.E. ratio is. And I'm just going to put it in real estate because that other guy on TikTok said real estate's a great deal. That's when you get into a lot of trouble. So all of the thought process that you have behind this makes me think that this is going to be a good decision for you. Are you going to have the most money possible in 20 years out of this decision? I don't have a crystal ball either. So I can't say yes or no. I do know that

Again, I'm in a different position of my life. I'm looking to take complications outside of my life or away from my life. So I am looking at...

keeping all of my money in the stock market because I have a big buffer between my FI number and my actual net worth. I'm not concerned if the market goes down, but I do want to make it clear. I don't want to go through a downturn. I'm not excited for a downturn. And I hope that you are wrong. And it just keeps going up. I am not predicting a crash.

I am not saying that the market is going to go down in 2025. I will probably be making a mathematically worse decision with my portfolio because the market will be likely to, you know, will potentially go up on a long-term basis. But there is a part of me that is worried about that.

right, that says the market is pricing in a lot of things that have to go very right. A lot of people, one of the things that scared me, Mindy, about this was I pulled the BiggerPocketsMoney audience here. I'll pull it up here on the screen.

I pulled them and I asked, at what point would you begin to worry that your index fund portfolio is overvalued or at risk? I'm worried now at a 26 times price to earnings ratio. I also made the mistake clearly of using the Google snippet instead of the actual price to earnings ratio at the current period. So 23% said they're worried right now.

3% said they're worried at a 30 times price. They begin to worry at a 30 times price to earnings ratio. And 2% said they worried at a 40 times price to earnings ratio. 72% said that they would buy the United States, US stocks or index funds at any price, no matter what it was trading at and never worry.

And that's where I think we've gone too far. We've gone too far as a FIRE community at some point. That one for me says I'm not going to turn my brain on and think about what assets should be priced at in a general perspective. And that is where I would – and sure, I should get some angry, nasty comments. That is in direct –

violation of the rules, the sacred text of the simple path to wealth written by my friend JL Collins, who I absolutely respect and love and recommend his book to a lot of people with there. And he's probably right there. But at some point, the price becomes

not worth it. Right. And that's where, that's where I'm at right now. I don't know if that means there's a crash. I don't know if that means that there will be a decade of wrong returns. It probably like maybe this time is different and it will probably go up in perpetuity. I'm still invested in it. I just can't have that much as a percentage of my wealth index funds, given where we're at. All right. We've got to take a quick break. We're going to be talking about how you should be thinking about your portfolio allocation, depending on where you are on your five journey coming up next.

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Welcome back to the show. My net worth is not solely index funds. We started off as stock pickers, for lack of a better word. We were investing in individual companies because we didn't know that the index fund existed. Once we discovered the index fund, it made it easy for us to take some of the money that was in individual stocks that we didn't really want that much money in individual stocks anymore and move it over to the index fund. So I do have...

more of a diversified portfolio in that respect. And I do have some real estate. I've got some pre-IPO investments that I have done. I've got some syndications. I've got some private money lending. So I do feel like I have a fairly well-rounded portfolio. It's not just 100% index funds. And I think that a 100% index fund portfolio is

While diversified because it's all the stocks in the stock market might not be your best choice. But again, how do you determine what is good for other people? Like, would you suggest not just VTSAX, but VTI, totally blanking on all the other index funds?

The VTSAX and VTI, I think are the same thing. And it's just like so long been unchallenged as the right answer. The only other one that I invest in, I invest in VTI, which is the S&P 500 index fund. It's the same thing as VTSAX.

It's just the ETF version. And then I invest in VOO, which is the S&P 500 version of that. Index Fund Portfolio, Personal Finance Club, if you follow him on Instagram, if you don't, you should. I follow him. He has put really good content out there. He posted a chart the other day that showed the differing performance of various index funds. And the headline is, there's no differing performance of these various low-cost index funds. It's remarkably similar. And it's so close that

I would even go so far as to say it's not really a decision to perseverate over. Pick one and invest in the index fund if you're going to invest in index funds. So my two choices have been VOO and VTI to this point. Yeah. And I think that's a good point. I had not seen that particular infographic from Jeremy at Personal Finance Club. I love Personal Finance Club. I think it's awesome. But that's a good point. If they're all the same, then you don't need to pick and choose. You could just...

put your money in whichever one you choose. But for somebody who is listening to this, Scott, what should they be doing if they have all index funds? So I think there's different answers to different time periods. I'm 23. I'm getting started out in life. I have very little rel... I have what seems to me to be a lot, $30,000, $40,000 in index funds or whatever at that point in my life, but is less than 1%, 2%, 3% of the amount I'd need to actually fire.

Well, I would go with an all, I would go with a very aggressive, undiversified investment portfolio. That's what I did, right? I just, I went all out into index funds and house hacks, right? Why would I, why would I do something very conservative when I have no wealth to protect at that point? I certainly don't want to go bankrupt with a house hack, for example. So I want to make that decision very carefully because it is a highly leveraged, it was a highly leveraged bet at that point in time. And it would be for anybody doing that. But I,

I'm a big believer of the things that I put into Set for Life, right? I would go all out, save as much as I possibly could and invest it in the highest long-term yielding opportunity. And let's say that the market, let's say the market crashes in the next year or two, 50%. Well, that's a good thing for that person because they're going to be investing into

that down market with many more dollars than what they currently have, because they're likely going to be earning more, likely going to be spending less, and they're going to have a long period of time to invest into that portfolio. But if I'm at or near the end of my FIRE journey, that same crash is absolutely devastating to a 100% index fund portfolio. People who think they're FIRE right now will fall way out of that. You could lose 10 years of accumulation of

in a market crash. If the market crashed with 80% of my wealth in the index fund, 50%, that's 10, 15 years of my accumulation on an average year, on a regular income year. I do not want to go through that. I worked this hard to get to this point from a FIRE perspective. I want to sustain a position of FIRE.

for the rest of my life. And I'm willing to accept lower terminal, long-term, end-of-life net worth in order to get there. And for me, I'm like, okay, if I buy our paid-off rental property at a seven, the seller claims it's a seven and a half cap. Let's call it a six and a half cap for our purposes on there. It's still gonna be pretty good from that. And that thing goes up 3.4% a year over the next 30 years on average in line with inflation. That's a 9.9% increase

return. It's pretty close to the index fund. I find it really hard to believe that in the event of a market crash, that this property, which I think I'm buying for 20% less than it would have sold for in 2021, would crash another 20% in the event of a market wipeout. So if there is a large crash and all asset values come down, I believe that real estate on an unlevered basis is

without any loan on it, which is what I'm doing here, will crash as a percentage far less than a market index fund. So that's the math there. And again, probably what will happen if you just average out history, the index fund would actually perform a little bit better than what I'm doing. And I won't have to deal with tenants. I won't have to deal with the odd capex project on there. And my life will be a little simpler. But again, I think that this is a way to de-risk it. A better way to de-risk it totally passively might be bonds.

And that is a textbook answer to this question. But I'm not willing to invest in a Vanguard bond fund with a 4.6% yield to maturity right now and bet on interest rates going down in a crash. That's just not how I'm wired. You are proving my point that you have thought this through probably –

perseverated on it for many, many weeks, even though this just came out. Oh, I'm going to sell this. You didn't just wake up one morning and be like, you know what? I'm selling. And another thing to point out, Scott, is that the 4% rule, the Bill Bengen article said the safe withdrawal rate is based on a 60% stock's

40% bond portfolio. It is not based on a 100% stock portfolio. Now, this is a risk that I am willing to assume because the gap between my FI number and my net worth is so big that it can weather this. I have been very fortunate to take advantage of the stock market going up. I

Do believe that we're going to see a bit of a downturn sometime in the future. That's not really groundbreaking declarations. I'm not going to sit here and say it's going to happen next week. Although there was that one time that I was off by one day back when COVID dropped on the 14th. I declared that it was going to be on the 13th or something. But I'm not I've used up all of my prediction abilities and I'm not going to predict anymore. But I don't.

I don't want to gloss over the fact that the Bill Bengen 4% rule is based on a 40% stock portfolio. So if you have 100% stocks, if you are nearing the end of your journey, the middle end of your journey, and what Scott is saying is making sense,

maybe you should start looking into a bond like investment vehicle for you, Scott, that is this, this real estate. It's acting like a bond in that it's pretty safe. You know what you're doing with it with regards to real estate and you're getting it for a really great deal. It's not as volatile as the stock market where you have no control over. Let's talk about the experience you had selling your stocks. Something tells me it's just, it's more than just like, okay, I'm going to sell it all. Well,

Well, the issue is, Mindy, I host this podcast and we preach about index fund investing for so long. I've talked to Bill Bingham and talked to JL Collins and talked to Mr. Money Mustache and talked to all the folks in the industry. So I have this feeling of betrayal of the principles that we've talked about on BiggerPocketsMoney for so long, which is why we're having this conversation to a certain point. There's like a guilt almost, like I don't know what to do.

in this position. I don't know what the right answer is. I don't know what the market's going to do. I just know that I'm uncomfortable given the set of realities facing my portfolio and what I perceive to be real about the market that I'm making this move. And that's why I'm talking about it here is like, maybe I'm making a foolish move that's going to create huge problems for this. Or maybe the market crashes in two months and

and I looked like a genius on there, but I really just got lucky because I just woke up one day and decided to move it. But I don't know. Those are all the things that are going through it. So that was the hard part. The mechanics of selling the stocks was ridiculously easy. I opened up my Schwab account. I put a sell order. Three seconds later, the cash is in my account. Transfer it over to the money market. I open up a Wells Fargo.

business checking account for my LLC that's going to purchase the property and wire the money into it. It was so mechanically easy for that. I did a last in, first out trade order to minimize my gains on the taxes with that. Very easy mechanical item in Schwab. And the exercise took me moments to do.

to do is kind of astounding. What about taxes? You alluded to them a little bit with that last in first out. Are these all long term capital gains that you are selling? Yeah, there will be a little bit of short term capital gains in there, but not not a ton. So my last even last in first out on the amount I'm selling, I have it's not a large

Huge. It's not a huge near-term gain. Okay. And let's say in terms of round numbers, let's say you sold $100 in stocks and you're going to buy this property for $100. Did you also take out a little bit more for taxes or are you just going to pay those out of pocket? My dear listeners, I have a huge request for you. We have a goal of hitting 100,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel. If you are not already subscribed, please subscribe.

please do me a favor and go to youtube.com slash biggerpocketsmoney and subscribe to our channel. All right, stay tuned for more right after this.

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Thanks for sticking with us. I'm going to pay those out of pocket over the course of the year. I have a large cash emergency reserve for those types of things. If you are not a real estate professional, you cannot use the capital gains to offset those. We'll see how that goes for me in 2025. That's one way to do that.

And then there's a couple of other things there, but I may owe taxes on a percentage of the gains for those. The tax burden is really not going to be a material part of this decision. I mean, we're talking about maybe like a few tens of thousands of dollars in the context of the overall move. But yes, I've gotten that feedback a lot. It's not going to be a major issue.

major own item in my case. Also, one other thing with this, you can see how I'm fearful or paranoid or worried or conservative, whatever word that is, around my portfolio and have moved from a how do I accumulate as much as possible to a how do I protect a little bit more of what I have here but still stay somewhat

somewhat aggressive. I'm not going to like a savings account, going to a rental property, of course, with this, but it's not going to be a levered one. So that's going to make it a lot much safer. But I also feel like I am in a high tax bracket today. And I believe that because I am

fi and relatively young and am unlikely to spend down my portfolio, I'm likely to continue to produce or allow my investment portfolio to produce more than I spend, that I will continue to accumulate wealth throughout my life. And that I will, I'm in a high tax bracket today and I will be in a high tax bracket at retirement in traditional retirement age because of that fact.

And I would be willing to bet that tax brackets will be higher in 30 years or in the future than they are today. Although I may be specifically wrong in the next four years with the current administration for that. But I believe that that's the case. I also pulled the bigger pockets money community on this one. And here's the poll. Do you believe that tax brackets will increase over the next 30 years? 60% of bigger pockets money listeners agree with me that yes, probably tax brackets will go up a lot for both income and capital gains today.

35% think that tax brackets will be at the same, and 5% are crazy people who think that taxes will be lower over the next 30 years. I'll take that bet against you all day long if there's some way to make a wager on that. But I think that that is not going to happen. And so I am not afraid to realize some capital gains in a year like 2025 and pay taxes right now.

My basis on the proceeds is now that higher. My after-tax wealth remains unchanged or may even be favorably increasing if I believe that when I sell this rental property in 30 years or stock portfolio, future stocks or whatever, however I end up deploying this money over the next 30 years, that basis will be, I'll have a lower long-term capital gain basis for that sale.

Is that making sense? That makes total sense. First of all, don't call the 5% of my listeners crazy that they think it's going to be lower. Misinformed, I hope they're right. The 60% that say that it's going to be higher, I hope they're wrong, but they're probably not going to be wrong. I think that this is a strategy that gets lost in our tax optimization group. The FI community is, I don't want to say...

or even frugal, although there are a large contingent that are frugal, but they definitely don't want to pay more taxes than they have to. And accessing these retirement funds early, accessing these investments early is,

is all about, or it seems to be all about, how can I get out of paying taxes? I mean, that was one of my first questions when I thought of this as, ooh, what are you going to do about the tax burden? But paying the penalty, paying the taxes is an option. And I'm glad that you thought that through. Again, there's that, I'm thinking about it. I'm not just making a

Yeah.

Definitely consider your tax obligation for 2020. You'll be paying the taxes in 2026. If you're selling now, consider that and don't let that hold you back. But look at the real dollars versus what the benefit is you're getting out of it.

It might not be worth it to you. It might be worth it to you, but definitely consider every angle. And that includes the tax angle. I'm glad you shared that part, Scott. Yeah. One other thing I'll also talk about is cash flow in a general sense. Like, Mindy, you're looking at this property, right? And it's listed at a seven and a half cap. Do you agree that unless I get very unlucky, I should generate a six and a half cap on this particular deal on an annual basis? I would be surprised if you didn't. I would be

unsurprised if it went up. And in the real estate market that we're in, that's a pretty great deal. This property will pay for 100% of childcare for a two-year-old and an infant on a full-time basis.

It will pay all of the property taxes for my primary residence, all the insurance costs. I live in a fancy schmancy HOA. It will pay for the HOA dues on that and it will pay probably $1,000 to $2,000 on top of that.

after those, those items. So that is, is it, it is not going to cover the entirety of my living expenses, but it will go a long way to defraying some very big buckets in the next couple of years that I would not. And there's no world where I would be withdrawing six and a half percent of my index fund portfolio in order to pay for those items. So that is another, another item that is very freeing from a mental standpoint on this property. Yeah.

Again, like, again, I could be thinking like there's so many things wrong with the decision and I'm going to pick these are the reasons why it's right for me or I feel it's right for me. Yes. And I think that's a really great point to note, Scott. This is Scott's decision about his financial situation based on the information that he has and his feelings on that information. If you are thinking, oh, Scott sold all his index funds, so I should sell all mine. First of all, he didn't sell all of them. He sold 40 percent. And Scott,

knowing what I know about this property, I think there's a lot of opportunity for you to be able to increase your numbers in the near future. You know, when the, when the leases, the current leases come up. So I am, I am excited about this property for you. I am cautious for anybody listening to this. It's not just a blanket thing.

You should sell everything or you should sell 40% and then invest in real estate. You should look at the market like Scott has looked at the market. You should look at the history of the market like Scott has looked at the history of the market. You should look at the current P.E. ratio. You should look at the current any bit of information that makes you successful.

and leery and then look at the implications for that. If you've got a thought about Scott's decision here, you should email him scott at biggerpockets.com and let him know your thoughts. I would love to hear some of these. I think it would be kind of fun to have some of these people who are like, oh, I think you're making a big mistake. Here's why. Or, hey, I think you're making a great decision. Here's why.

Maybe we could read those on the show or even have those people on the show. I'll read one of them right now. We released an episode about this with Dave. I did a recording with Dave Meyer, which released in the BiggerPocketsMoney channel as well, about why I'm reallocating away from stocks and to real estate. And the top response, I believe, is...

From Tyler, it's a mistake, bro. Lots of likes on that. He's probably right. This is why I'm doing it. And this is my rationale. You know what, Scott? It would be a mistake if you just woke up and said, I'm going to sell.

With no reasoning behind it, you're just like, I don't know. I'm just going to sell because some dude said it on the internet. But I think it would also be a mistake not to be like, I know you read the book on index fund investing 10 years ago, listener, and you've been putting your money into it.

Just be real. Like, remember that book reminds you to stay the course through really severe drops around there. And if you're a hundred percent in index funds and you're at or close to the finish line, I don't know what the right answer there is, but I do think that a beginning of that right answer is to remind you that you can fall out of fire. And that 10 year gap is

of the market going down, if you're not in the 60-40 portfolio, you're not at the 4% rule. You do not, you cannot safely withdraw

on a 100% index fund portfolio for 30 years and not run out of money. You can safely withdraw 4% of a 60-40 stock bond portfolio and not run out of money for the next 30 years per the 4% rule. And that's the fear that I feel. And I want to, I think that it is appropriate to put in the minds of some people who are at or close to the end of the journey there, around there is like that

10 years between 2000, 2001 and 2013, where it took the market to recover from one peak to the next.

That's my 30s. I think it's great. You have – well, I don't think it's great. Like, oh, yeah, you had all this terribleness in your 30s. I didn't spend my 20s living in freaking duplexes for that so that I would fall out of fire in my 30s. That's more of my point there. Yeah. And again, this all comes back to this is a decision that you are consciously making based on your information, your research, your –

thoughts about the market as we stand today. So if you're not willing to think about it like Scott has thought about it, if you're not willing to do research like Scott has done research, and if you're not willing to really form an opinion about this, then don't make this decision right now. All right, Scott, I think we've covered this. Should we get out of here? Let's do it. All right, that wraps up this episode of the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. He is Scott Trench, and I am Mindy Jensen, and I'm going back to basics saying see you later, alligator.