Has the FIRE Formula Changed? Why 100% Index Funds Isn’t the Answer

Scott:
Everyone in the fire community talks about throwing money in 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 BiggerPockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my V-T-S-A-X fan co-host Scott Trench.
Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here and ready to chill with you. What an inside fire joke there. VT Saxon Chill. Alright. BiggerPockets is 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.

Mindy:
Ooh, Scott, that was a little deep already. Let’s jump right into it. I am on the opposite side of you with the V-T-S-A-X 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?

Scott:
I looked up and after 10, 11 years in this fire journey, realized that while I have some real estate, my financial portfolio outside of my house, for example, 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 a hundred percent concentration if I was just starting out in year one of accumulation for the longterm 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 all a stock market index funds passively 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?

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 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,

Scott:
54. Yeah, I’m getting up there. Mindy.

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.

Scott:
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 US 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 10 more years. Now, if I am thinking 30 or 50 years out, then I believe that whatever I have in stocks will continue to accrete at an eight 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’m 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. Now as 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 a 26 times price to earnings ratio. Well, Google’s first result, for whatever reason, they’ll probably change right after this podcast is showing the price to earnings ratio from September, 2014. People, 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 is trading at about 29 times price to earnings right now as of January 30th, 2025, and it’s bounced up around between 29 30 times throughout the month of January, it’ll probably go higher. Target market on average generally tends to go up.
I’m not willing to experience or put at risk that portion of my portfolio at this stage of my financial journey in a position where it could lose half or a huge chunk of it and take a decade to recover from.

Mindy:
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 guy’s like, oh my goodness, this guy’s falling. And Scott’s like, well, that one guy on TikTok said it was so I better sell. 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 PE ratio?
And that’s fine. You don’t have to know what a PE ratio is, but you can’t make decisions based on a PE ratio if you don’t know what a PE 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 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 PE ratio is too high even though I don’t know what a PE 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.

Scott:
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 worst decision with my portfolio because the market will be likely to, will potentially go up on a long-term basis. But there is a part of me that is worried about that, 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 BiggerPockets money 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’re 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 am not going to turn my brain on and think about what assets should be priced at in a general perspective.
That is where I would, I’m 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 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 maybe this time is different and will 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. Alright, 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 FI journey coming up next. Welcome back to the show.

Mindy:
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 a hundred percent index funds. And I think that a 100% index fund portfolio while diversified because it’s all the stocks in the stock market, might not be your best choice. But how do you determine what is good for other people? Would you suggest not just V-T-S-A-X but VTI totally blanking on all the other index funds right now.

Scott:
The V-T-S-A-X and VTI think are the same thing, and it’s just so long been unchallenged as the right answer. The only other one that I invest in, I invest in VTI, which is the s and p 500 index fund. It’s the same thing as VT sacs. It’s just the ETF version. And then I invest in VOO, which is the s and 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 fee index funds. It’s remarkably similar and it’s so close that I would even go so far as to say is 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,

Mindy:
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?

Scott:
So I think there’s different answers at different time periods. I’m 23. I’m getting started out in life. I have very little. I have what seems to me to be a lot 30, $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 a very aggressive diversified investment portfolio. That’s what I did. I went all out into index funds and house hack, right? 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. It was a highly leveraged bet at that point in time and it would be for anybody doing that. But I’m a big believer of the things that I put into set for life.
I would go wall 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’re 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 an a hundred percent fund portfolio. People who think they’re fire right now will fall way out of that. You could lose 10 years of accumulation in a market crash in there. If the market crash 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 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, they sell our claims. It’s a seven and a half cap. Let’s call it six point half cap for our purposes on there, but it’s still going to 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% 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 wipe out.
So if there is a large crash and all asset values come down, I believe that real estate on an unlevered basis 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 take average out history, the index fund will actually perform a little bit better than what I’m doing and I won’t have to deal with tenants and 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.

Mindy:
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 Benin article said the safe withdrawal rate is based on a 60% stocks, 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 PHI number and my net worth is so, 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 want to gloss over the fact that the bill bangin 4% rule is based on a 40% stock portfolio. So if you have a hundred percent 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 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 more than just like, okay, I’m going to sell it all.

Scott:
Well, the issue is Mindy, I host this podcast and we preach about index fund investing for so long I’ve talked to Bill Bangin and talked to JL Collins and talked to Mr. Murray 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 BiggerPockets money for so long, which is why we’re having this conversation to a certain point. There’s a guilt almost. 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 talking about it here is 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 I look like a genius on it 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 went up my Schwab account, I put a sell order. Three seconds later, the cash is in my account, transferred 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 are 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. It was kind of astounding.

Mindy:
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?

Scott:
Yeah, there’ll be a little bit of short-term capital gains in there, but not a ton. So even last in first out on the amount I’m selling, it’s not a large huge, it’s huge near term gain.

Mindy:
Okay, and let’s say in terms of round numbers, let’s say you sold a hundred dollars in stocks and you’re going to buy this property for a hundred dollars. 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 do me a favor and go to youtube.com/biggerpockets money and subscribe to our channel. Alright, stay tuned for more right after this. Thanks for sticking with us.

Scott:
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. 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 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 item in my case. Also, one other thing with this, you can tell 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 aggressive.
I’m not going to a savings account. I’m 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’m 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 am 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 BiggerPockets 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 BiggerPockets money? Listeners agree with me that yes, probably tax brackets will go up a lot for both income and capital gains. 35% think that tax brackets will be out 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 you’d like to. There’s some way to make a wager on that, but I think that that is not going to happen. And so I’m not afraid to realize some long answer. I’m 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?

Mindy:
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 PHI community is, I don’t want to say cheap 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 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 quack decision based on something that I saw on some random social media site that, oh, I don’t worry about this. And then you’re slapped with a big tax bill. I mean, if you do decide, my dear listeners, if you do decide that you agree with Scott and you want to start moving some of your money out of your investments in the index funds and into a different vehicle, 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.

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 and it’s listed as 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?

Mindy:
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.

Scott:
This property will pay for 100% of childcare for a 2-year-old and an infant on a full-time basis easily. It’ll pay all of the property taxes for my primary residence, all the insurance costs. I live in a fancy schmancy HOA. It’ll pay for the HOA dues on that and it’ll pay probably a thousand to $2,000 on top of that after those items. So 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 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 item that is very freeing from a mental standpoint on this property. Again, again, I could be making, there’s so many things wrong with the decision and these are the reasons why it’s right for me or I feel it’s right for me.

Mindy:
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%. 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 when the leases, the current leases come up. So I am excited about this property for you. I am cautious for anybody listening to this. It’s not just a blanket. You should sell everything or you should sell 40% and then invested 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 PE ratio. You should look at the current, any bit of information that makes you leery, and then look at the implications for that. If you’ve got a thought about Scott’s decision here, you should email him, [email protected] 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.

Scott:
I’ll read one of ’em right now. We released an episode about this with Dave. I did a recording with Dave Meyer, which released in the BiggerPockets Money channel as well, about why I am reallocating away from stocks into 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.

Mindy:
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.

Scott:
But I think it would also be a mistake not to be like you’ve read, I know you’ve read the book on index fund investing 10 years ago, listener, and you’ve been putting your money into it. Just be real. 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 of the market going down, if you’re not in the 60 40 portfolio, you’re not at the 4% rule. You do 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 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 that 10 years between 2000, 2001 and 2013 where it took the market to recover from one peak to the next. That’s my thirties.

Mindy:
I think it’s great you have, well, I don’t think it’s great. Like, oh, yay, you had all this terribleness in your thirties.

Scott:
I didn’t spend my twenties living in fricking duplexes for that so that I would fall out of fire in my thirties. That’s more of my point there.

Mindy:
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. Alright, Scott, I think we’ve covered this. Should we get out of here?

Scott:
Let’s do it.

Mindy:
Alright. That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench, and I am Mindy Jensen, and I’m going back to basics saying, see you later, alligator.