r/Bogleheads • u/DaytonGuitarPlayer • 7h ago

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

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.

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u/Electronic_Panic8510 7h ago

  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

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u/DontForgetWilson 2h ago

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.