This is the title of a thread at Bogleheads started on Aug 12, 2019 and still alive as of Aug 21, 2025.As of that date there are 1123 posts. Of course the Boglehead orthodoxy is the three fund portfolio and here at MFO the number of funds held in one portfolio in limitless. I have been toying with going one fund and every time I speak to DW about our assets that desire is increased. One day she is going to wake up and need a new asset manager in the family office. Right now my I am thinking about Vanguard Global Wellesley. VGWLX. Managed by Wellington and they might be smarter than me. My reservation is that it doesn’t have enough EX US assets . I am partially divesting of US assets but that is another discussion. Anyone else thinking about becoming a one funder? You will lose a hobby but ,,,,,,,,
Comments
I greatly respect Wellington Management and have owned several funds managed by the firm.
Fund consolidation and portfolio simplification is a worthwhile goal.
I believe a one-fund portfolio is not optimal for those who are drawing down their assets.
If an investor needed to tap their portfolio during stock market corrections
or bear markets, they would be forced to sell stocks at low prices.
Perhaps owning two funds—a global equity fund along with a short-to-intermediate term
investment-grade bond—might yield better results?
I agree that one will rarely go wildly wrong with Wellington management. I think it is difficult to go with one fund, or even three, if one expects to have asset allocations change as market conditions change. Not to sound discouraging here, but the more one wants a portfolio to have a certain mix, the harder it is to satisfy that with a single fund.
When you say that you'd like a fund with more foreign securities, it sounds to me either that you'd like a fund that actively adjusts foreign vs. domestic, or that you'd like a fund that holds a fixed, larger percentage foreign securities; I'm guessing the former.
With that in mind here are WGWLX's foreign vs. domestic common stock ratios over time:
Aug 31, 2019: 46% foreign (34.7% domestic out of 64.8% total common stock)
August 31, 2020: 40% foreign (39.2% domestic out of 65.1% common stock)
August 31, 2021: 41% foreign (38.3% domestic out of 65.1% common stock)
August 31, 2022: 40% foreign (38.9% domestic out of 64.9% common stock)
August 31, 2023: 42% foreign (38.1% domestic out of 65.2% common stock)
August 31, 2024: 47% foreign (34.8% domestic out of 65.5% common stock)
Feb 28, 2025: 44% foreign (36.2% domestic out of 64.8% common stock)
June 30, 2025: 44% foreign (36.37% domestic equity out of 65.36% total equity)
Some tweaking perhaps, but perhaps also more a reflection of issue selection than a conscious move offshore. Hard to tell at this 10,000 foot level.
My larger concern with an all in one fund is what bonds do or don't do for you. Certainly they add ballast (temper moves both up and down) whether they are part of an all in one fund or in a pure bond fund. What they also can provide is insurance against sequence of return risk. If the market does well, all fine and good and one can keep whatever allocation one is targeting. But when the market swoons, the bond (or cash) portion of a portfolio can serve as a reserve - as a place from which to draw needed cash until the market recovers. One can do that with a separate bond (cash) fund; one can't do that with an allocation fund.
I'm playing around with simplifying my portfolio. Aside from some small/mid cap holdings for spice and MMFs/T-bills for cash, I'm trying out a four fund portfolio. A bond fund (for the reason noted above), a domestic allocation fund (for professional management of fixed income percentage), a global stock fund (for professional management of foreign equity percentage), and a domestic equity fund (see Warren Buffett
Reiterating what I said at the outset - the fewer funds one has, the more difficult it is to get a desired allocation, especially as one changes the target over time.
Schwab charges a corresponding fee of $74.95.
The transaction fee is high because D&C (along with Vanguard) refuses to pay for fund supermarket placement.
Not only does Fidelity charge a $100 TF to purchase D&C funds, they "hide" their funds!
From the www.fidelity.com homepage, input a ticker for a D&C fund in the How can we help?
field and press the Enter key to bring up the fund.