Who Has An Investment Policy Statement?

[djohnflatfeecfp]

The recent post from Physician On Fire and then here at WCI made me wonder how many people have their own personal Investment Policy Statement.  I have never come across a prospective individual client who has a formalized one, so I am curious - do you?  If so, is it self-generated like the example PoF shared or one created by a software program?

 

PS Hopefully this thread is in the right place and not redundant.  It's my first thread and I could not find a similar one when I searched, but there always is user error.

[East coast]

I do not. I look at it the same way I do with budgets, which I don't have either. I'm sure there are folks that written budgets/ips' are helpful, but I don't feel a strong desire to create one.

[Donnie]

I don't have one.  I have a spreadsheet with my monthly net worth which details all of my accounts, my goals, progress towards my goals, and my modeled projected annual ending balance in each of my account buckets (taxable, retirement, 529, etc) with various assumptions on returns and contributions.  My IPS is pretty simple - accumulate wealth by investing in a diversified basket of stocks.

[FIREshrink]

i have had one since joining bogleheads in 2009.

[hightower]

We have one that we typed up to help come up with an asset allocation.  I don't think we've really reviewed it since we wrote it over 6 months ago.  I see the potential value in having one, but I don't think it's really done much for us having it.

[jfoxcpacfp]

All of our clients do, or we are currently working on one.

[Hatton]

I just wrote one on the POF post today in the comments.

[DoubleMDs]

Yes, after WCI posted one years ago. Looks very similar to PoF, not surprisingly.

[Dr. Mom]

Have a definite plan but do not have it written out.

[The White Coat Investor]

hightower wrote:

We have one that we typed up to help come up with an asset allocation.  I don’t think we’ve really reviewed it since we wrote it over 6 months ago.  I see the potential value in having one, but I don’t think it’s really done much for us having it.

Click to expand...

I think most of the value is in creating it, not having it.

[jhwkr542]

Yes, it gives me something to go by, mostly for asset allocation but also what to do with big lump sums of money like bonuses, etc.

[kingsnake]

I have one vaguely in my head. I don't feel a need to write one out.

[beagler]

I'd like to see Donnie's spreadsheet template (not the actual $). It's probably pretty sophisticated. Do you have rebalancing built in too?

[Donnie]

I'd be happy to post it, but I need to spend some time to clean it up for others, remove personal details, etc.  I have a rebalancing calc.  I haven't spent much time rebalancing lately since my portfolio is ~90% weighted towards stocks, and I don't really care if it moves higher, which it has been over the past couple years.

[willpmd]

i have a sort of hybrid family financial mission document/ investment policy statement.

Kind of puts our tao of investing with the nuts and bolts portion. I also keep a net worth and monthly cash flow excel spreadsheet.

Helps calm the nerves and keep my wife and I together in financial matters