Last update: March 10th, 2010

At Merriman, we have always been committed to helping both clients and non-clients through sound financial educational materials.

We know that choosing the proper assets and maintaining consistent investment discipline can be challenging to many people. Investors often make emotional decisions in response to changing markets, economic and political trends – and those emotional decisions can be very counterproductive in the long run.

We believe that most investors could benefit greatly from having  professional advice and, where appropriate, professional investment management. A good financial advisor can serve as a guide, a coach and a source of encouragement during good times and bad times.

That is exactly the business we are in. If you would like to pursue that possibility, the place to start is a consultation with one of our financial advisors. This consultation, which has no cost or obligation, can be done by telephone or in person at our Seattle office.

To see if you qualify for a consultation, please go here . If you are a good fit for Merriman and we are a good fit for you, we would love to have you as a client.

All that said, on this page you will find suggestions for sample portfolios using Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and Vanguard mutual funds. These sample portfolios are not the same as those we use for clients. However, they reflect the academic research, philosophy and principles we use to build portfolios for Merriman clients.

In the past, we suggested portfolios constructed exclusively from no-load mutual funds.  We believe that ETFs are increasingly attractive for their lower costs and greater tax efficiency.

Note: Our sample portfolios for investors at Fidelity and T. Rowe Price are now incorporated into our 401kHelp.com site, which gives specific recommendations for many 401(k) and similar retirement plans.

This table shows three different suggested asset allocations for stocks and bonds, for Aggressive, Moderate and Conservative portfolios, which will be followed in the tables below. 

(1) The Vanguard REIT fund has a 1% fee on sales of shares held less than one year.

(2) The Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Small-Cap Index fund has purchase and redemption fees of 0.75%.

(3) Vanguard Emerging Market Index fund applies a purchase fee of 0.50% and a redemption fee of 0.25%

(4) We recently changed the recommendation for the Vanguard Tax-Managed (TM) Equity Portfolio.  If you already held these three Vanguard Tax-Managed funds (TM Growth and Income, TM Small Cap and TM International), you should know your holding period before making any trading decisions.  These three funds apply the 1% redemption fee if held less than five years.

(5) We don't have the recommendation for the Vanguard Tax-Managed Moderate and Conservative portfolios since the tax situation varies from person to person.

(6) We recommend managing portfolios on a total rate of return basis, with the total return coming from interest on bonds, dividends on stocks, and potential price appreciation from the securities in the portfolio.  Withdrawals from a total return portfolio may come from both income and principal.  The monthly income portfolio is designed for those investors who want to generate income from the portfolio, without withdrawing any principal.  In order to generate reasonable levels of income, we are including allocations to investment grade corporate bonds, high yield corporate bonds, and Ginnie Mae mortgage securities, bond types which are not included in our total return portfolios.  The Vanguard High-Yield Corporate Fund assesses a 1% fee on shares held less that one year.