My Retirement Blog

Lifecycle, Lifestyle, Target Retirement… and now LifeStrategy. Are these all the same things? Are they different? Is it just branding at work?

LifeStrategy is Vanguard’s trademarked name for a Lifestyle fund. If you recall the differences between a Lifestyle and a Lifecycle fund, a lifecycle fund is one that changes its asset allocation as time passes. A lifestyle fund, on the other hand, remains static and is like a snapshot in time of a lifecycle fund.

Vanguard added four LifeStrategy funds - Conservative Growth, Growth, Income, and Moderate Growth. The Conservative Growth Fund is 20% short term reserves, 30% bonds, and 50% stocks. The Growth Fund is 0% short term reserves, 10% bonds, and 90% stocks. So you can see, the Growth Fund is significantly more aggressive than the Conservative Growth Fund.

It’s essentially the same thing as a Lifestyle fund, simply wrapped in a different name.

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The 156th Carnival of Personal Finance is available at PT Money and my post on Naming Beneficiaries on Retirement Plans was included.

• Vanguard Retirement Funds
• Rolling Over Your 401(k) To Vanguard
• 3 Reasons I Rolled Over My 401(k)
• Vanguard Changes Fee Structure
• Cut Those Fund Expenses