The Bogleheads portfolio tells you to hold stocks, bonds, and international.
Richiest agrees — and adds two things the orthodoxy ignores: a proper cash position, and a legitimized slot for the bet you were going to make anyway.

What the Bogleheads get right

Diversified index investing beats most active management over time. Low costs matter enormously. The Frame is built on these foundations.

What the Frame adds

A dedicated Park slot because "invest everything" is bad advice when rent is due. A Dare slot because pretending investors won't take high-conviction bets doesn't stop them — it just means they do it without a framework.

The Frame respects the Bogleheads core — and adds what it leaves out.

How it works

Three steps. Then stop touching it.

Pick your life stage

The Frame allocates differently depending on where you are. In your 20s, Build gets 55% — you have time on your side. In your 60s, Earn gets 40% — your portfolio should be paying you. The Build Your Frame tool handles the math.

Outcome: your target allocation.

Pick one fund per slot

Each slot has a Pareto pick — the fund that wins its job for most investors. SGOV, SCHD, VOO, VXUS. Dare is yours to choose. Read the analysis if you want reasoning. Or just use the defaults.

Outcome: five funds, one portfolio.

Rebalance once a year

Set recurring investments proportional to your targets. Check once a year for drift greater than 5–10 percentage points. Rebalance if needed. That's the whole system.

Outcome: done. Leave it alone.

Set it up in minutes. Check once a year. That's the entire system.

Suggested allocations

The numbers shift as life does.

Life stage	Park	Earn	Build	Roam	Dare
20s	5%	10%	55%	20%	10%
30s	10%	15%	45%	20%	10%
40s	10%	25%	35%	20%	10%
50s	15%	30%	30%	20%	5%
60s+	20%	40%	20%	15%	5%

Starting points, not personalized advice. Adjust to your income, timeline, and risk tolerance.

The logic behind the shift

Early on, Build dominates because compounding needs time. A 25-year-old investing $500 a month in VOO for 35 years has decades of market returns working for them.

As retirement approaches, sequence-of-returns risk becomes real — a bad market in the first three years of retirement can permanently impair an all-equity portfolio. Earn's growing income reduces the need to sell Build at unfavorable prices. Park ensures there's always dry powder.

The Dare slot never exceeds 10% at any life stage. It's the boundary between a high-conviction bet and a portfolio-altering gamble.

Find your allocation →

Build is always the engine. Everything else supports it.

How the Frame compares

Good portfolios are not mysterious. The problem is that most alternatives hide the tradeoffs.

Three other approaches. One honest comparison.

The Bogleheads 3-Fund

Stocks, bonds, international. Simple and mostly right.

The three-fund portfolio is the gold standard for a reason. Low cost, diversified, easy to maintain. The Frame agrees with the core insight and diverges on two points: T-bills are safer than bonds and currently yield more, and the absence of a structured high-risk slot.

Robo-advisors

Answer 15 questions. Get a portfolio you don't understand.

Robo-advisors automate good behavior — regular investing, rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting. The downside: they build portfolios opaque enough that most investors don't understand what they own or why. The Frame is transparent by design. Five funds, five jobs, explainable to anyone.

Stock picking

Most people underperform the index they're trying to beat.

Stock picking is not wrong — it's just hard. The research on individual stock selection versus index funds is clear: most active strategies underperform their benchmarks over 10+ years, net of costs and taxes. The Frame gives you index exposure plus a legitimate outlet for conviction plays in the Dare slot.

Every alternative has merit. The Frame makes the tradeoffs visible instead of hidden.

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