Creating a buy and ignore portfolio for a child

[DavidVY]

I'd buy BRK, GOOG, MRC (substitute for DNOW), and DEO.

[KinAlberta]

And what index funds would people buy?

 

Equities, bonds? allocation?

[benhacker]

And what index funds would people buy?

 

Equities, bonds? allocation?

 

If you have a long horizon, and a truly "don't look at it" attitude, I would think the most straight forward choice would be to buy VT, reinvest dividends, and forget about it.  If there were a global "value weighted" equivalent, I might consider that, but something about the simplicity of a global equity index that is market weighted appeals strongly to me.

 

I would not own any bonds if my horizon were truly decade+, and I had to set it and forget it.

[Aberhound]

I suspect there will so much change in twenty years that picking stocks is too difficult so instead I suggest focusing on demographics and the long term cycle predictions of Martin Armstrong. 20 years terminates in 2035. Change is accelerating and to a certain extent it is being coiled up like a tight spring because of governments all over the world trying to slow and resist change. The biggest change being resisted is utilization of Z axis natural forces. So I suggest buying an index fund in India. There demographic peak is 2035 and knowledge of the Z-axis forces is likely to arise where it was used in the past. Vedic writings recorded the knowledge so Indians have the advantage of thinking these forces exist. Their childhood stories talk of vimanas and the like. Their traditional knowledge and medicine use Z axis natural forces. For instance, read about their medical use of mercury. They somehow enliven mercury and remove harmful properties rendering it a powerful medicine. Martin Armstrong predicts a switch from the private to public cycle and the collapse of the long term confidence cycle into deflation similar to the 1930s also in 2035. This suggests something changes that causes people to turn to government to save them much like occurred worldwide in the 1930s during the last change from private to public waves. Interestingly 2035 is about the time of the 2nd solar minimum from now so we are likely to see mini-ice age climatic conditions as indicated by the accerlating collapse of the solar and earth's magnetic fields. I hope the current newcomers to Canada enjoy the cold. By that time the nation state will likely be less important so we should start thinking of regions. (The EU is the first regional government. We can already see the South American and North American regional governance. Where regional governance forms the current nation state governments have less power. South-East Asia, including India is likely to be a prosperous region. Watch who joins ASEAN. Accordingly an ASEAN index fund would be better than an India fund so you enjoy the outsized gains of investing partly in a currently poor place like Burma which will see outsized gains as the skills and wealth from Singapore gets invested there. Places that currently have powerful vested interests who oppose the loss of national power are not safe places to invest. Libya is one example. Other regions might be safe. I do not see the opposition to regional governance in South America. The locations of the central governance is already known so buy real estate in those cities. Caracas for instance is now cheap and is the location of the regional central bank. But look for geological stability because a weaker magnetic field means worse earthquakes. All the nuclear facilities on fault lines in the northern hemisphere makes me nervous. Diversification is mandatory as there are many black swan risks where there is a small chance of catastrophic harm.

[orthopa]

How about stepping over a 4 inch bar and just check it once a year? Its not going out of your way too much. ;)

[KinAlberta]

How about stepping over a 4 inch bar and just check it once a year? Its not going out of your way too much. ;)

 

If you are around (i.e. alive)

 

We were just updating our "last will and testament" and our child will benefit from both ongoing registered plan(s) going forward and if we are both killed our assets will go into a trust for the child.  So the trustees will manage both the registered plans and any trust that might be established.  This is how it generally works but I think it may be sub optimum.  Taking some holdings and putting it into a second very narrowly defined trust could produce far superior returns to offset trustee bias that hurts returns. 

 

If only one of us were to die, both my wife and I are proficient enough at money management to continue to invest for our little one until she is old enough to look after money on her own - if ever.  However, a lot of adults really aren't investment focused and so either don't save or hand their money over to 'professionals' that mostly fleece the client. According to many news article, most adults simply don't save at all and face a bleak future. I'm sure all their parents or grandparents had a very different idea about saving for the future, but those lessons learned in the Great Depression, etc. seem mohave been lost on the Baby Boomers and subsequent generations. So parents with children have to consider that if one of them dies, will the other have any inclination to investing for the child, or will the adult child have any inclination towards investing when other pressures consume their time. 

 

As an aside, many of the posters/members on this board never mention their spouses, or children for that matter, and so it's uncertain that should the poster die, how their portfolios will be managed going forward.

 

If you have family and you died, what would happen to your investments?  Would your spouse just say, well, he or she knew stocks so I'm just going to sit tight and leave them as is - for years and years.  Or would they go to a broker who would then say, oh, better sell it all (paying the capital gains of course) and then invest in his 'select' mutual funds.