Somewhere along the way, retirement investing became an organizational problem.
There's a 401(k). A Roth IRA. A taxable brokerage account. An HSA. And possibly an old 401(k) from a job that ended in 2018, which is still sitting there like an abandoned shopping cart.
Then the fun begins. The 401(k) has a target-date fund. The Roth IRA has VTI. The taxable account has VXUS. The HSA has a bond fund. The old 401(k) has some S&P 500 fund you can't remember choosing.
And now you have five accounts, six funds, seven tickers and approximately zero idea what percentage of your actual money is in bonds. Congratulations. You have accidentally built a portfolio.
The important part is that you did not build five portfolios. You built one portfolio that happens to live in several different houses. That distinction sounds tiny. It isn't. It can completely change the way you think about retirement investing.