Why index funds and ETFs are good for retirees

Christine Benz, Morningstar

Older adults likely began their investing careers before exchange-traded funds existed and have stuck with traditional mutual funds.

But as retirement approaches, many investors look at their portfolios with a fresh set of eyes and make adjustments.

And the more I work with in-retirement portfolios, the more I like ETFs and traditional index funds for several reasons:

1. For retirees who are using income distributions from their investments to help cover living expenses, the small fees levied by index funds and ETFs ensure that more of those payouts flow to them.

For total-return-oriented retirees who are rebalancing (trimming appreciated securities) to meet living expenses, index funds and ETFs also work well. These are typically pure plays on a given asset class, making it simple to identify which assets to scale back to deliver the retiree’s cash flow and restore the portfolio to its target asset allocation.

2. In addition to making it easy to extract cash flows, index funds and ETFs also do well in limiting a retiree’s oversight obligations. Many retirees have better things to do than monitor news about their holdings. Retirees employing index funds do need to watch their total portfolios’ asset-allocation mixes, but most core-type index funds and ETFs change little on an ongoing basis. Moreover, because index-tracking ETFs and funds track a benchmark rather than trying to beat it, manager changes matter much less than with active funds.

3. Many retirees prize risk controls, and people sometimes say that active funds “earn their keep” in down markets.

While mild-mannered active equity funds, especially those focused on valuation and quality, might help lower a portfolio’s overall risk, the most dependable way to reduce a portfolio’s loss potential is by adjusting the stock/bond mix, not the underlying holdings.

4. Taxes are another area where index funds and ETFs shine in retirement. Equity index funds and especially ETFs are incredibly tax-efficient relative to their actively managed counterparts.

Managing for tax efficiency is important at every life stage, but most important in retirement. Investors’ portfolios are often at their largest right before and during retirement; the share of the portfolio parked in taxable accounts is also apt to be highest then.

5. Holding more cash and bonds tends to lower a portfolio’s return potential; keeping expenses low helps ensure that investors keep more of their returns .

Assume a retirement portfolio consists of a 10% cash position, 40% in bonds, and 50% in stocks and earns 5% on an annualized basis over the next decade. If an investor pays 0.75% in expenses, her return shrivels to 4.25%; she has ceded 15% of her gains. But if she can limit expenses to 0.10% per year, her take-home return is 4.90%; she surrenders just 2% of her return.