Helping Fiance with 401K/Roth, am a little lost.

[budgetnoob]

My 401K didn't have as many options... basically they just had portfolios of aggressive, moderate, etc with a whole bunch of mutual funds/bonds/international stocks in them. She has to make a few more choices ...

Here're the basics:
She's 24, making 35K and plans to retire around 55. No debts and thinking 12-15% contribution to 401K. Once we put that in, it gives a bunch of choices of where to allocate that investment and we're lost.

Bond
John Hancock Income
Pimco Total Return
Eaton Vance Floating Rate
Allianz Gi High Yield Bond
American Cent Inflation Adj

Cash Stable Value
Rtc-Ny Life Anchor Account

Large Cap
Mainstay Large Cap R2
Bny Mellon S&P 500 Index
Dodge & Cox Stock
Blackrock Equity Dividend

Mid Cap
Munder Mid-Cap Core Growth
American Beacon Mid Cap Value

Small Cap
Allianz Gi Njf Small-Cap Value
Buffalo Small Cap

Specialty
Virtus Real Estate Securities

Target Allocation
Insperity Horizon Rm Income
Insperity Horizon Rm 2020
Insperity Horizon Rm 2030
Insperity Horizon Rm 2040
Insperity Horizon Rm 2050


I don't know enough to allocate here?

[snafu]

Sorry, more questions than answers...Does Fiancee's employer contribute any percentage match? At what point are sums vested? What fees and/or management expenses are charged by the investment choices? You may have noticed we often suggest Vanguard as they have very low MER's, that silently leaves investor accounts and an excellent comparative. Finally, what level of risk can Fiancee tolerate? How upset will she get as value of retirement rollercoasters? Personally, I look at the top 10 holdings of any fund I'm considering.

With Fiancee just starting her investment portfolio there isn't sufficient value [in my opinion] to muddle the picture with allocation worries. Once she has been contributing for 4 years or so, she could re-direct contributions based on knowledge and economic trend. I hope she'll start with a low cost Index Fund. Under more normal condition, I'd suggest 20% Bond and 80% Equity. If you think interest rates will increase in the next 5 years, you know that will force Bond rates downward.

...just opinion

[ktmarvels]

Snafu brings up some good questions to ask and things to know. However, since you "don't know anything" I would recommend putting it in the target fund that most closely aligns with when she can withdraw from the 401k penalty free (usually 59.5). The target funds usually provide a mixture of stocks and bonds which automatically become less agressive as the target date comes. They may have higher fees associated, but for an automatically diversified, automatically rebalancing fund it's a good place to start.

Like Snafu was alluding to, your best bet is usually to contribute to your 401k up to the company max, then fund/max out a Roth IRA, then increase 401k contributions to the max.

[budgetnoob]

It turns out she has a book that has helped us a little bit. She currently gets no employer contribution. We did determine that the last series of options were target funds so for right now we're just putting everything in there. Something like 5% bonds, 50% stock, 20% international stock and the rest in various things like real estate. Fee summary is .53% and $5.30 per $1K.

I didn't know about the switching over to Roth after maxing out employer 401K. Currently my employer contributes up to 4% if I contribute 5%. I've been contributing 10% to my 401K, should I switch this to 5% 401K and 5% Roth?