Robert Brokamp

You want to do the apples to apples comparison, ideally over three to five years, maybe longer, just to make sure that you are outperforming that category or not.

You probably should just go with an index version.

But how else do you look at all your investments, your funds, your stocks, your things like that?

You go line by line?

Let's move a little bit more into rebalancing.

And you mentioned that there are a few ways to do it.

Some people do it annually, once a year.

Some people do it as a target.

If a certain allocation has moved five percentage points one way or the other, do you think it's important to do it every year?

Or is it one of those things that you could probably get away with doing it every two to three years and be okay?

I'll just point out there's some simple ways to just do rebalancing on the edges with cash flow, right?

If you're still saving for retirement, all your contributions to your 401ks and IRAs go into the underweighted assets.

If you're retired and you need to sell a little bit every year to pay your bills, you sell your overweighted assets.

If you do have an overweighted position and you're reinvesting the dividends, you can just stop reinvesting the dividends.

You probably shouldn't be building up and then you use that cash to buy something that you need a little bit more of.

Any other tips and tricks involved in rebalancing your portfolio?

Well, this has been great, Sean.

Thanks so much for joining us.

It's time to get done, fools, and I'll just highlight a couple of year-end financial planning tips that I haven't mentioned in previous episodes, starting with spending money in a flexible spending account that can't be rolled over to next year.

If you're saving for college, there's no deadline for contributions to 529 accounts, but many states allow residents to deduct contributions on the state income tax return, and to take advantage of that, the contribution generally must be made by December 31st.