Single investment across multiple accounts… good, bad, indifferent?
The main restrictions you see with IRA's involve contributions, and not the actual investments themselves. I would be indifferent to having a single investment across multiple accounts. It might be a bit trickier to manage, especially if your strategy involves some specific asset allocation. Other than account management though, there's no big issue. One implication is the added fees if you are investing in something with a trading cost or commission, such as your stock purchase. If you pay low costs to trade (e.g. with a discount broker) and don't switch your investments often, then costs overall should remain reasonable .. but always be aware of your costs and seek to minimize them. The other issue you could run into is that each deferred account is going to be subject to its own RMD's (Required Minimum Distributions) when you've retired or hit 70.5 years of age.  Roth's don't generally care about RMD's at first, but are still subject to them once the person that created the Roth has passed.  Having fewer accounts will simplify the RMD stuff, but that's really only a factor in terms of being forced to sell 'something' in each account in order to make the RMD.   Other than that, it's just a matter of remembering to check each account if you come to a decision that it's time to liquidate holdings in a given security, lest you sell some but forget about the rest of it in another account.  (and perhaps as Chris pointed out, maybe having to pay fee's on each account for the sale)  Where this really can come into play is if you choose to load up each individual account with a given kind of investment, instead of spreading them across the accounts.  In that case RMD's could force you into selling something that is currently 'down' when you want to hold onto it, because that is your only choice in order to meet RMD's for account X.  So if you have multiple accounts, it's a good idea to not 'silo' particular vehicles into a single account, but spread similar ivestments across multiple accounts, so you always have the choice in each account of what to sell in order to meet an RMD. If you have fewer accounts, it's thus a lot easier to avoid the siloing effect
When you are starting out using a balanced fund can be quite advantageous. A balanced fund is represents a diversified portfolio in single fund. The primary advantage of using a balanced fund is that with it being a single fund it is easier to meet the initial investment minimum.  Later once you have enough to transition to a portfolio of diversified funds you would sell the fund and buy the portfolio. With a custom portfolio, you will be better able to target your risk level and you might also be able to use lower cost funds.  The other item to check is do any of the funds that you might be interested in for the diversified portfolio have lower initial investment option if you can commit to adding money on a specified basis (assuming that you are able to). Also there might be an ETF version of a mutual fund and for those the initial investment amount is just the share price. The one thing to be aware of is make sure that you can buy enough shares that you can rebalance (holding a single share makes it hard to sell some gain when rebalancing). I would stay away from individual stocks until you have a much larger portfolio, assuming that you want to invest with a diversified portfolio. The reason being that it takes a lot more money to create a diversified portfolio out of individual stocks since you have to buy whole shares. With a mutual fund or ETF, your underlying ownership of can be fractional with no issue as each fund share is going to map into a fraction of the various companies held and with mutual funds you can buy fractional shares of the fund itself. WRONG. Assuming each account has the same investment option the rate of return is not dependent on the initial amount of money in the account, but rather the allocation amongst said investment. Suppose based on your investment allocation in either account you gain 10% interest over the year.  In the first scenario your ending balance will be (30000+4800)*1.10 = $38,280.  In the second scenario your first account will be worth 30000*1.10 = $33,000, and the second account will be worth 4800*1.10 = 5280, for a total of 33000+5280 = $38,280. "You should only invest in individual stocks if you truly understand the company's business model and follow its financial reports closely.  Even then, individual stocks should represent only the tiniest, most ""adventurous"" part of your portfolio, as they are a huge risk. A basic investing principle is diversification.  If you invest in a variety of financial instruments, then: (a) when some components of your portfolio are doing poorly, others will be doing well.  Even in the case of significant economic downturns, when it seems like everything is doing poorly, there will be some investment sectors that are doing relatively better (such as bonds, physical real estate, precious metals). (b) over time, some components of your portfolio will gain more money than others, so every 6 or 12 months you can ""rebalance"" such that all components once again have the same % of money invested in them as when you began.  You can do this either by selling off some of your well-performing assets to purchase more of your poorly-performing assets or (if you don't want to incur a taxable event) by introducing additional money from outside your portfolio.  This essentially forces you to ""buy (relatively) low, sell (relatively) high"". Now, if you accept the above argument for diversification, then you should recognize that owning a handful (or even several handfuls) of individual stocks will not help you achieve diversification.  Even if you buy one stock in the energy sector, one in consumer discretionary, one in financials, etc., then you're still massively exposed to the day-to-day fates of those individual companies.  And if you invest solely in the US stock market, then when the US has a decline, your whole portfolio will decline.  And if you don't buy any bonds, then again when the world has a downturn, your portfolio will decline.  And so on ... That's why index mutual funds are so helpful.  Someone else has already gone to the trouble of grouping together all the stocks or bonds of a certain ""type"" (small-cap/large-cap, domestic/foreign, value/growth) so all you have to do is pick the types you want until you feel you have the diversity you need.  No more worrying about whether you've picked the ""right"" company to represent a particular sector.  The fewer knobs there are to turn in your portfolio, the less chance there is for mistakes!" You question is very hard to answer as it is tough to put a value on how much bad your added investment in evil companies would cause and also how much value the charities add.  However, there has been a bunch of really good work on socially responsible investing in general.  This paper might be too technical for some but the conclusion section is very readable and clear. The big worry about socially responsible investing from a financial standpoint is that it will lower returns in the long run.  The paper above and others show fairly clearly that as long as you only exclude a few classes of stocks and still have a fairly broad base that the expected returns are similar.  The main issue though is some socially responsible funds have much higher fees. So the usual advice applies, do your research to make sure your investments are well diversified and have low fees.   As long as the index is fairly broad you can consider the difference between the fees on the socially responsible index and investing in a more common index as the long run cost.  Then you can balance that cost and having more money for charity against the benefits of not investing in evil companies. Quick and dirty paper but pretty interesting.. I'm not in Portfolio Management but I probably would have ended up at the modal number as well.   I don't know the subject deeply enough to answer my own question, but is the bias always toward underestimation of variance? Or is that a complex of the way the problem was set up?   Another question I have for those in investment management; Would this impact asset allocation? "As with ANY investment the first answer is....do not invest in any that you do not fully understand.  ETF's are very versatile and can be used for many different people for many different parts of their portfolio, so I don't think there can be a blanket statement of ""this"" one is good or bad for all." "As other responders said, you can certainly roll over multiple 401(k) into a single account. An added benefit of such rollover (besides the ease of tracking) is that you can shop around for your Rollover IRA provider and find the one that gives you the specific mutual funds that you want to invest in, the lowest expenses, etc. - in short, find the best fit to your priorities.  There are also ""lemon"" 401(k) plans and if you are in one of them, get out!  And rollover is the way out. There is also one possibility to keep an eye on as it happens rarely, but it does happen - rolling a 401(k) over into another 401(k).  I've done it once when I started a job at a company that had a great 401(k) with a good selection of low-cost mutual funds.  I rolled the 401(k) from one previous job in to this 401(k) to take advantage of it.  At the same time I kept a Rollover IRA, combining the 401(k) from all other jobs; it had more investment options and provided some flexibility." "If you just had one expense once a year of $1200, you would put in $100 a month. The average balance is going to be $600 in that case - the 0 and $1200 months average to $600, as do the $100 and $1100, the $200 and $1000, and so on. If you had one expense twice a year of $600 and put in $100 per month it will average to $300. You have a mix of 3/6/12 months - does 8 months seem reasonable as an ""average"" frequency? If so, there should be about a 4 month slush all the time. Now instead of one expense averaged over 12 months, imagine 12 accounts, each needing $100 a month. If you started at zero, you would put in $1200 the first month and immediately spend it. One account would go from +100 (its share of what you put in) to -1100 while the rest are all at +100. Overall your balance would be zero. Then the next month you would again deposit 1200 and spend 1200, bringing one account to -1000, one to -1100, and the rest to +200. You average to zero actually on deposit because some of the ""accounts"" have negative balances and some have positive. But aren't doing that. You ""caught up"" the months you were  behind. So it would be like putting in $1200 for the first account, $1100 for the second, $1000 for the third and so on - a total of $7800. Then you take out $1200 and go down to 6600. The next month you put in $1200 and take out $1200 but you will always have that $6600 amount in there. All of the accounts will have positive balances - averaging $550 in this example." What you're looking for is the 'Transaction Report'. When you're looking at the report (it comes up empty), open the options and click on the first tab 'Accounts'.  Here you can highlight multiple source accounts in the top pane, and filter by the Expense accounts that you are interested in the bottom pane. Here's an example that goes over the process (there are many examples online, I just included the first one that came up in a search). "In general, I'd try to keep things as simple as possible. If your plan is to have a three-fund portfolio (like Total Market, Total International, and Bond), and keep those three funds in general, then having it separated now and adding them all as you invest more is fine. (And upgrade to Admiral Shares once you hit the threshold for it.) Likewise, just putting it all into Total Market as suggested in another answer, or into something like a Target Retirement fund, is just fine too for that amount. While I'm all in favor of as low expense ratios as possible, and it's the kind of question I might have worried about myself not that long ago, look at the actual dollar amount here. You're comparing 0.04% to 0.14% on $10,000. That 0.1% difference is $10 per year. Any amount of market fluctuation, or buying on an ""up"" day or selling on a ""down"" day, is going to pretty much dwarf that amount. By the time that difference in expense ratios actually amounts to something that's worth worrying about, you should have enough to get Admiral Shares in all or at least most of your funds. In the long run, the amount you manage to invest and your asset allocation is worth much much more than a 0.1% expense ratio difference. (Now, if you're going to talk about some crazy investment with a 2% expense ratio or something, that's another story, but it's hard to go wrong at Vanguard in that respect.)" Your biggest concern will be what happens during the transition period. In the past when my employer made a switch there has been a lockout period where you couldn't move money between funds. Then over a weekend the money moved from investment company A to investment Company B. All the moves were mapped so that you knew which funds your money would be invested in, then staring Monday morning you could switch them if you didn't like the mapping. No money is lost because the transfer is actually done in $'s. Imagine both investment companies had the same S&P 500 fund, and that the transfer takes a week. If when the first accounts are closed the S&P500 fund has a share value of $100 your 10 hares account has a value of $1000. If the dividend/capital gains are distributed during that week; the price per share when the money arrives in the second investment company will now be $99. So that instead of 10 shares @ $100 you now will buy 10.101 shares @ $99. No money was lost. You want that lookout period to be small, and you want the number of days you are not invested in the market to be zero. The lockout limits your ability to make investment changes, if for instance the central bank raises rates. The number of days out of the market is important if during that period of time there is a big price increase, you wouldn't want to miss it. Of course the market could also go lower during that time. I don't think investing in only one industry, which you may know well, is very wise. You may want to invest in that industry but you should not restrict yourself from investing solely in that industry.  There are many times when your chosen industry may not be performing very well and other industries are performing much better. If you restrict yourself to just one industry you may be either out of the market for long periods of time or your portfolio may show negative returns for extended periods of time. You may want to know an industry or a number of companies very well but do not fall in love with them. The worst thing you can do is get emotional about an investment, an investment is there to make you money not for you to get emotional about. Don't restrict yourself, instead look to maximise your returns with investments that are performing better at the time. I use two different brokerages, both well-known. I got a bit spooked during the financial crisis and didn't want to have all my eggs in one basket. The SIPC limits weren't so much a factor. At the time, I was more worried about the hassle of dealing with a Lehman-style meltdown. If one were to fail, the misery of waiting and filing and dealing with SIPC claims would be mitigated by having half of my money in another brokerage. In hindsight, I was perhaps a bit too paranoid. Dealing with two separate brokerages is not much of an inconvenience, though, and it's interesting to see how their web interfaces are slightly different and some things are easier to do with one vs the other. Overall, they're really similar and I can't say there's much advantage (other than my tin-foil hat tendencies) to splitting it up like that. I have a similar plan and a similar number of accounts.   I think seeking a target asset allocation mix across all investment accounts is an excellent idea. I use excel to track where I am and then use it to adjust to get closer (but not exactly) to my target percentages. Until you have some larger balances, it may be prudent to use less categories or realize that you can't come exactly to your percentages, but can get close.   I also simplify by primarily investing in various index funds.  That means that in my portfolio, each category has 1 or 2 funds, not 10 or 20. I  found that  an application already exists which does virtually everything I want to do with a reasonable interface.  Its called My Personal Index.  It has allowed me  to look at my asset allocation all in one place. I'll have to enter: The features which solve my problems above include:  Note - This is related to an earlier post I made regarding dollar cost averaging and determining rate of returns.   (I finally got off my duff and did something about it)