Lazy portfolio

Couch Potato Portfolio

Scott Burns, Dallas Morning News, 1991

Even simpler than the 3-fund: split your savings 50/50 between a broad US stock fund and a broad bond fund and rebalance annually. Burns proposed it specifically as a benchmark for active managers to beat — most don't.

Allocation

50%

50% · US Total Market
50% · US Aggregate Bond

Weighted expense ratio

0.030%

Across the 2 of 2 slices we could price.

Weighted tax efficiency

/100, weighted by allocation. Lower in heavy-bond portfolios.

Slices

Number of holdings — also the number of lots you rebalance.

Implementation

Weight	Role	Ticker	Fund	ER	AUM	Score
50%	US Total Market	VTI	Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF Shares	0.030%	$2.20T	95
50%	US Aggregate Bond	BND	Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund	0.030%	$389.70B	86

VTI · alternates: ITOT
BND · alternates: AGG

Editorial take

The Couch Potato is best understood as a teaching portfolio rather than an optimal one. The lack of international exposure leaves it concentrated in a single country's equity market — an unusual choice for anyone who didn't inherit a strong home-country bias.

Compare the slices

See holdings overlap and cost difference between any two of this portfolio's funds.

VTI vs BND

Curated allocation. The funds listed are how this portfolio would be built using the catalog as it stands today; alternate tickers and notes are flagged inline.

PlainIndex publishes data and editorial commentary — nothing here is personalized investment advice. Read the methodology for how the scores referenced here are computed.