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Barclay
Staff

Barclay asked 6 months ago in Saving

What is indexing?

The "Becoming a Millionaire" calculator (http://www.filife.com/calculator/becoming-a-millionaire) gives me this comment in my results: "Based on your existing savings of $X it appears that you will need to save $Y indexed at 5.0% annually in order to become a millionaire by age 65." (I don't want to display my numbers.) What does "indexed at 5.0% annually" mean?

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Thomas Fisher, CFP®Napfa_small
Expert Partner
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BarclayD, the calculator's terminology is rather confusing. You're correct that "indexed at 3%" refers to the amount that you entered in Annual increase on new savings: (%)." It's just saying that it's assuming that you will increase the amount you save by 3% each year. I think it was a poor choice of words....

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Morris Armstrong
FiLife Contributor
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Actually Indexing, when referring to portfolio design, simply means that the portfolio is mirroring something else. It does not have to be broad based at all since the Dow Jones Industrial Average contains only 30 companies and there are index finds that track that. When you are using an index fund you are also forsaking independent research.

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Russell Wayne, CFP
FiLife Contributor
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Simple answer: When investing, one of the common questions is how well one is doing compared to the market. By indexing (buying a security that attempts to mirror the market), you are in de facto buying the market rather than what in most cases turns out to be a futile attempt to beat the market. Not all indexed securities accurately track the underlying index, so a bit of research will be helpful.

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Paul Kennard
Staff
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Indexing is a passive investment approach emphasizing broad diversification and low portfolio trading activity. So I understand the output of the calculator to mean that you should come up with a diverse portfolio that tracks well against other index funds.

Index funds – are mutual funds that invests in a portfolio of securities that represents a particular market (like the entire stock market), or, a particular piece of a market (say, like, international stocks or small companies). These funds are built to replicate the performance of their relevant market - and so they should track that market’s indexes. For example an S&P 500 index fund aims to provide the exact same return as the S&P 500 index. We’re big fans of these low-cost, low-maintenance funds.

Read more >>
http://www.filife.com/guides/whats-a-mutual-fund

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Barclay
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Are you sure? I ask because the "indexed at" percentage corresponds to the "Annual increase on new savings" field in the form, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with indexed funds.

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Douglas Uhlenhake replied about a month ago

That is correct!
It is strictly as Thomas Fisher, CFP described to you. It is the annual indexing for inflation for example where you enter a percentage that says increase the savings amount by a certain percentage each year; paying more each year than you paid the previous year. And the difference between the two years is the percentage such as 3%. For example, at 3% savings indexing you would for save lets say in year 1 - $100, year 2 - $103, year 3 - 106.09 and so on... and infinite series is assumed unless the calculator in question or the Financial software includes a field to enter a number of years to index the savings or whatever is being indexed, or a field for a specific ending date to be entered at which time the calculation would stop.
The term indexing here in your question, and the calculator has nothing to do with Index Funds that mirror other aggregated indexes such as the DOW or the S&P500 or a certain group of stocks, bonds or ETF's for example. With new investment products coming out at various times, I can foresee the possibility that some index fund product designer could figure out a creative way to expand it beyond what is possible today.

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