The Best Not Best?

Talking Real Money - Investing Talk

Don McDonald

Business, Education, Investing, How To

4.2 • 680 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Don and Tom unpack Morningstar’s latest “5 of the Best” investing methods, praising the simplicity of balanced and target-date funds but warning against high-fee versions. They emphasize that no portfolio fits everyone and push for low-cost index solutions. Listeners call in with 401k rollover questions and political discomfort around financial firms—sparking a candid, occasionally funny chat about ethics, emotions, and retirement realities. The episode wraps with a challenge to fix Social Security and a request for more five-star Apple Podcast reviews before Don dies on the mic. 1:07 Morningstar’s ‘5 of the Best’ investing methods reviewed 1:48 Balanced funds and target-date funds: pros and cautions 2:48 Three-fund and custom-fit portfolios discussed 4:08 Critique of Morningstar’s recommended balanced funds 6:19 Expense ratios of target-date funds and better alternatives 7:17 Morningstar’s risky allocation advice near retirement 9:17 Why one-size-fits-all portfolios don’t work 10:14 Caller Sally: Should we move from T. Rowe Price 401k? 12:56 T. Rowe Price vs. Vanguard fee comparison 14:03 How to roll over a 401k into an IRA 17:39 Custom portfolios vs. simplicity and human behavior 21:42 Caller Lynn: Political discomfort with Schwab as custodian 26:26 Keeping an advisor despite ideological concerns 28:38 Raising the retirement age: Denmark vs. U.S. 32:48 Fixing Social Security: remove the wage cap 35:29 Listener reviews, crypto hate, and ETF conspiracy theories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:25.5	Visit us in store and shop online to discover more.
0:34.9	Reality Radio for a really great future.
0:37.9	We're talking real money.
0:40.8	Hey, welcome back to the Talking Real Money Radio show and then eventually podcast.
0:46.5	I am one of your two hosts.
0:49.5	One of your two hosts for Talking Real Money for a very long time, like 15 years.
0:57.3	And we've done thousands of shows, and we appreciate you for helping propel us into consistently the top 100 investing podcasts in the country.
1:07.9	Thank you.
1:08.5	We really appreciate that.
1:10.1	I'm Don.
1:10.5	Over there as Tom,
1:11.4	and you're there. Thanks for being where you are. We talk about money. And we spend a lot of time
1:18.0	during our week, every single day, really, reading a lot of articles about investing and about
1:24.2	managing money, trying to find things that are different, unique, things that we can really wrap our heads around and think are great and things that we want to rebut.
1:37.1	And Morning Star is a great source of educational.
1:41.2	It's all free.
	...

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