Like other great sales organizations, American Funds has made sure there is a product to fit every imaginable opportunity. Different combinations of front, back, and ongoing commissions; different ERs; 12b-1s and no 12b-1s. Crazy, you say? American is laughing all the way to the bank.

Right now I am overweight foreign equities (40% US, 31% foreign) because of more attractive valuations and, more importantly, those countries are in the midst of QE whereas we are at the end of our QE. I continue to like lower volatility foreign plays like MINIX, EFAV and GLIFX/GLFOX.
Kevin

Re foreign equity funds:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/01/16/investing-international-funds/21825245/
Both supports (sort of) and modulates what Sven posted. As OAKIX and SGOIX are closed, recommendations are interesting.
Wagg has moved on to other venues.

I wonder if defined maturity bond indexes could be made to work in the mix? Not the HY varieties, but rather the corp bond varieties. They better allow for more discrete control of duration, and have reduced volatility, vis-a-vis conventional bond indexes of comparable maturities. Or would this lead to "being too cute by half," a bunch of extra work and not getting all that much more from it?
http://www.etf.com/sections/etf-issuer-perspective/defined-maturity-indexes-combining-best-attributes-bonds-and-funds?nopaging=1
https://indexes.nasdaqomx.com/Home/BulletShares?source=ETFcombs
I'm thinking here of the BulletShare 0-3yr corp bond index (maybe combined with 0-3 and/or 0-5yr corp Ladder index). Something like that; pick the proportions for each.
update/add-on: conceptually, I would be looking at an allotment to these as a CD-substitute. I haven't checked out their yields; if they suck, then what would be the point? However, if they are equal or better, then advantage to the ETF; and, unlike the CD, you could redeem them whenever, if interest rates rose and you wanted to change course, without penalty (assuming the underlying index hadn't changed too much in value).

I think foreign stocks are in better position in the near term:
1. trading at more favorable PEs
2. Europe and Japan are in early phase of recovery (however slow) and better chance of further earning expansion than that of US.

FYI: Long-term bond investment had an impressive 2014 to the supremacy of risk-off trade sentiments in the wake of global growth concerns. On the other hand, short-term bonds gave a rather tepid show last year on speculations that the Fed would hike interest rates soon.
Short end of the yield curve rose faster than the long end, and the spread between both yields narrowed to start 2015 as well. Though flattening of the curve is expected to be witnessed once the Fed hikes key rates, volatility is buoyant in the bond market (read: Profit from a Flattening Yield Curve with This ETF).
Regards,
Ted
http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/175990/totl-hits-500-million-in-aum
M* Snapshot TOTL: http://www.morningstar.com/etfs/ARCX/TOTL/quote.html
TOTL Is Unranked In The (GB) ETF Fund Category By U. S. News & World Report::
http://money.usnews.com/funds/etfs/general-bond-funds/spdr-doubleline-total-return-tactical-etf/totl

401-k will be leaving two of their funds in the near future. I'm glad to report I had zero dollars in either one !
Derf

Reviving an older thread: I uncovered a M* Fund Times May 1, 2015, article on management shakeup at Acorn Funds. Robert Mohn is retiring (unexpectedly) as domestic chief investment officer in 4th quarter 2015, and several experienced analysts left in 2013-2015. M* is putting the Acorn funds under review.
Recent poor performance of ACRNX led to about 40% of assets being withdrawn in 12 months leading up to May 1 article.
Link, must sign in to view:
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=696099

I've held several AF's since 2006 and been very pleased with them. They're fairly straight-shooters as a company and I have no qualms with them other than the A-class loads[1] and how many share classes they've sliced themselves into. I also hold some very low-cost R-6 funds of theirs in my university 403(b)....no problems there, either.
[1] Advisor put me into several of them as part of a 70-30 split as we redid the portfolio that year w/a new firm. I put 70% into individual equities, he put 30% into funds. Knowing what I know now, and with performance aside, I'm not sure I would pay the loads myself, nowdays, however.

@JohnC, For cash sleeve here are my thinking:
1. Saving accounts pay little (actually negative after inflation) but they are flexible.
2. Short term investment grade bonds yield 1.5 - 1.6%. VFSUX and VSCSX for example. Minimal duration impact from rising rates.
3. Balanced funds yield > 2.5%. Prefer VWIAX, but higher risk with intermediate term bond exposure (65% in the fund).
@Bee, thanks for sharing your insights.

I agree with Desota - I would be quite surprised if you could get an R-class share outside of an employer-sponsored retirement plan.
When American Funds came out with class F shares (now called F-1), they were available not only through advisors, but through some offbeat discount brokers (e.g. Citicorp Investment Services - doesn't exist any more). Later, when American Funds added F-2 (same as F-1 but w/o 12b-1 fee), they seemed to tighten up on access to the F-1 shares.
Nevertheless, there appear to be a few access points remaining. I don't know how useful any of this will be, but here's what I know about those access points.
Several HSA (Health Savings Accounts) offer access to a limited number of mutual funds (i.e. they have a menu, like an employer's 401(k) plan does). Among these offerings one can often find one or two American Funds (class F-1). For example, here's the fund list from HSA Bank.
Some HSAs offer brokerage options, and these tend to be treated as retirement accounts or institutional accounts, rather than generic retail accounts. As such, they seem to offer greater access to some investments. Many of these HSA accounts use TDAmeritrade as the brokerage partner, and it looks like AMPFX (AMCAP F-1) may be available that way, NTF, despite a search on the brokerage site turning up a page saying the fund is not available for sale there.
Another back door is via a no load VA. What you get there are usually clones of the retail funds, but that's often close enough. You can access the American Funds Insurance Series VA funds through Jefferson National Monument Advisor VA. There isn't a clone for AMCAP, but there is one for Growth Fund of America.
Finally, there's the solution for the high rollers - dump $1M into American Funds, and you can get their A shares without a load. (Though there's a 1% redemption fee if you sell within a year.) If you're investing that much, you're probably not worrying about whether there's a transaction fee.

legalcool.com/lawyers/Pennsylvania/Lancaster/17602/1vlm/Thomas-Adrian-Russo.html
Sooooo.......WTF?!
Just what are we here and do we have time for all of this. Maybe that's why we have a buy and hold portfolio, eh?

The R class is for 401k plans. The F2 is only available through advisors charging a wrap fee. A shares are your best bet but would be a waste at fidelity as you are paying a 12b1 fee which goes to an FA. I hold A shares through EJ.

This fund company seems to take the flavor vanilla and slice it 12 ways to Sunday.
A mere one fund is offered also as:

I compared AMCPX and RAFGX. RAFGX is a R6 shares class has a low minimum (as they all do) and an ER that is half the A share class (AMCPX). AMCPX also comes with a 5% load.
How do investors make a choice between all these flavors?
I'm looking for a brokerage platforms that offer the cheapest share class of American Funds that offers these shares NTF (No Transaction Fee). R6 share (in this case RAFGX) seem to be the cheapest through my brokerage, but I have to cough up the transaction fee.

Last filing:
https://jivedata.com/13F/860643/

Actually, the paper seems to say something a bit different.
All else being equal (i.e. same fund family, similar "size, value, and momentum scores"), the researchers found no meaningful difference in pre-tax performance between tax-managed and non-tax-managed funds.

The average before-tax return is very similar for tax-managed funds and non-tax managed funds (0.27% vs. 0.26% per month). ... The average before-tax return is not significantly different between exchange-traded funds and matched open-ended index funds (0.50% vs. 0.51% per month).

Aside from keeping turnover lower (and hence costs lower), other techniques used by tax-managed funds tend to limit what a fund can do and thus potentially impede pre-tax performance. Quoting from the paper's abstract:

Mutual funds can reduce the tax burdens of their shareholders by avoiding securities that are heavily taxed and by avoiding realizing capital gains that trigger higher tax burdens to the funds’ investors. Such tax avoidance strategies constrain the investment opportunities of the mutual funds and might reduce their before-tax performance.

The abstract continues: "Surprisingly, more tax-efficient mutual funds do not underperform other funds before taxes, indicating that the constraints imposed by tax-efficient asset management do not have significant performance consequences." Emphasis added. That is, the conclusion is only that tax-managed funds don't do worse, not that they do better.
What improves pre-tax performance is not tax-efficiency, but keeping trading costs down (a side effect of minimizing trading to keep realized gains down). So look directly for funds with low trading costs
There are lots of papers that discuss trading costs. Brokerage fees can be found in SAIs, and should correlate well with turnover ratios. Market impact is likely affected by how much of a company a fund owns. ISTM that these are the factors that one should be looking at, not tax-efficiency, which is at best a proxy for these costs.

I keep about two years of cash within my portfolio as a safety net plus the portfolio itself kicks off enough income to meet my current annual withdrawal needs. Any cash held above ten percent, for me, would be considered excess and held due market conditions. Therefore, I am presently 10% cash heavy due to market conditions at 20%. And, I could still raise another 15% within the cash area while remaining invested towards the low end of my asset allocation ranges for the income, growth & income, and growth areas by reducing equites from 50% to 40% and other from 10% to 5%. I think most every investor needs to know where they can best raise cash within their portfolio should they need to do so.

Dex, STHBX a dog of a dog. In the same short term junk arena it is completely outclassed by ASHDX and OSTIX.

I was going to suggest a combination of OSTIX and WHIYX.
ASHDX has a short history from what I have researched.

STHBX is for 'near cash' it was bought about 2 years ago and is down 1.3% from my purchase price. A fund with a stable price and some interest is better then a fund with a volatile price and higher interest. The interest has more then offset the loss - so the fund did the job.
When doing the comparison you have to look at the interest rate at time of purchase and change from purchase price.
What did those fund pay for interest 2 years ago and how did the share price change +/-%?

Edit: You are lucky to have a pension. Shouldn't you be just fine once you begin taking SS? You may still have a little out of pocket but not much. I assume that will come from your nest egg?

I'm looking at taking SS at 63.5. That would give me 13 years where I don't have to touch my dividends/interest/principal. If I buy a new truck it is 8-9 years. This is another, example of what we both said before - How do people without a pension or a large investment account pay their bills??????????

@JohnC - Not sure what strategy I'm following - but I've come to like multi-asset funds more and more in recent years - specifically the TRP low-fee variety. I think of them more as "I don't know what the f* to do with this money" type funds. Won't make a lot. But won't lose a lot either.
RPSIX is one good example. It's a fine multi-asset income fund that might fit your needs. The semi & annual reports are exceptional at showing graphically how the fund is allocated, normally among 10-12 other funds. And, that's what you're buying: a broad collection of funds - but from people who know how to allocate and how to fine-tune along the way. (Anyone so interested can easily pull-up the reports for this fund on TRP's website.)
I differ from most here in not keeping a significant stash of cash for emergencies or unexpected needs. Other than the currently 18% overall portfolio allocation, viewed as ballast, there's nothing additional outside the normal budgeted living expenses. In our case, anyway, we're conservatively enough invested that a separate stash isn't necessary. We'll pull those unexpected expenses from across the total portfolio. It'll "ding" our returns a bit if taken at an ebb in the markets. However, holding lots of cash also dings you.
Am not recommending the above approach for others. Wouldn't be advisable for younger or more aggressively invested folks. ..... Have a good weekend.