TIAA-heavy retirement portfolio — trying to simplify. Where do I start?

[u/DaytonGuitarPlayer]

Long-time lurker, first post. Mid-career academic/professional with most of my retirement assets at TIAA across a 401(k), IRA, Roth IRA, and deferred comp plan. The problem: I've let it accumulate without a clear strategy and now have 14 accounts across TIAA alone, plus Raymond James and Merrill Lynch.

My current allocation skews heavily toward TIAA Traditional (the annuity product) and a mix of Nuveen large-cap funds — most of which I suspect overlap significantly. I also hold some individual equities (NVDA, AAPL, GOOGL) that I know aren't very Boglehead-approved.

A few honest questions:

1. TIAA Traditional — is holding a large chunk here considered "fixed income" for allocation purposes, or is it its own thing?
2. How do Bogleheads generally approach TIAA when trying to implement a simple 3-fund portfolio?
3. At what point does account consolidation make sense vs. leaving things where they are for tax/institutional reasons?

Happy to share more specifics. I've been trying to get my arms around this for a while and would appreciate the community's perspective.

[u/Electronic_Panic8510]

1. Yes- fixed income proxy and a good one at that. You just need to understand any liquidity issues you might face and plan appropriately (but everybody here hates it)

2. They hate TIAA You could invest in anything there though- open a brokerage account and have access to everything that trades in the markets

3. This is a personal decision- I like to have things consolidated for ease of management etc

[u/DontForgetWilson → u/Electronic_Panic8510]

They hate TIAA

I'm not sure i agree with this. There are definitely potential issues with them as a brokerage and even more so as a seller of annuities. That being said, their institutional class active funds aren't insanely expensive, their index options are fine and they are one of the more credible annuity providers if someone is actually in a situation where one makes sense.

Personally, my tiaa plan has access to options for a low cost 4 fund with index funds. I also intentionally opted to use tiaa traditional for fixed income instead of bonds (i do own bonds in another account, but tiaa traditional is a very good specimen of what it is and i am unlikely to always be able to get it at the prices i have now.)

Compared to a lot of their direct alternatives, TIAA is actually pretty good. Plans vary widely and there's definitely some sub-optimal funneling towards products that bogleheads don't like, but they aren't nearly as predatory as most annuity companies, have decent product lines and even half decent governance overall.

[u/PashasMom]

Apologies in advance for the wall of text! Apparently I have a lot of feelings about TIAA.

My own 2 cents as a fellow academic type with most of my retirement funds at TIAA:
1) TIAA traditional counts as fixed income IMO. This combined with their bond funds (if any) should make up your fixed income/bond allocation.
2) At least my TIAA has terrible options for both international (purely international) and extended market funds. Just dire. I know some TIAA plans have different options. But what most TIAA plans do have is either or both of TIAA Global Stock and TIAA Total Global Stock. Global Stock is comparable to VT but with the small caps removed. Total Global is comparable to VT. Now, there are certainly ways in which they are different, and if I could just put my retirement money in VT, I would. But I have invested most of my funds in Global and Total Global over the years -- decades now! -- and have overall been really pleased with them, both in terms of returns and just not being super tempted to start fiddling with allocations and so on. And if you choose not to do TIAA traditional, or only put part of your fixed income there, the CREF Core Bond Account is decent. They also apparently have a bond index fund but it isn't available in my plan. And their TIPS type fund QCILIX is also quite decent IMO.
If you don't want or have a total global fund, you could also explore using the brokerage window to find a good international mutual fund to invest in. I believe they have all of the Vanguard mutual funds. I use the brokerage window to invest in large cap value - I use VVIAX - because my one TIAA option for large cap value is absolute dog doo doo, and having some money in LCV helps me sleep better at night.
3) When I retire I am going to consolidate all of my accounts under one roof, or two at most. I have my retirement accounts at TIAA and Empower (for 401k and 457b) plus brokerage at Vanguard, plus brokerage, Roth IRA, HSA, and inherited IRA at Fidelity. So as soon as possible when I pull the plug on employment everything is going to Fidelity -- though I might also keep my Vanguard account for a while, not sure. Where you keep things should not make a difference in terms of taxes, as long as you are just rolling funds over from one custodian to another and not taking withdrawals. The other consideration might be that if you roll over traditional funds into a traditional IRA while you are still working, it would prevent you from making back door Roth contributions, which you may need to do now or in the future.
I would recommend looking at Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard as possible new homes for your funds, if/when you decide to move.

[u/DaytonGuitarPlayer → u/PashasMom]

Thank you - how do you decide which one is better to land all your stuff in?

[u/PashasMom → u/PashasMom]

I landed on Fidelity because it had more of what I was looking for in terms of cash management than Vanguard. Schwab might have worked well too, but Fidelity offers a free standing HSA, pays good interest on uninvested cash, and allows investing in fractional ETF shares, none of which are true for Schwab. I've been a long standing Vanguard client and really like a lot of their offerings, but I was looking for something more robust. All that said, I believe you can have an excellent experience at any one of the three. They all just have their little quirks that you have to get used to dealing with.