One thing that I need to do at some point is to rebalance my retirement portfolio. I have some money in an inherited IRA from my mother, and there's way too much cash in there to generate good growth (though I definitely won't liquidate all the cash--I'll leave enough in there to provide some liquidity in case of an emergency....my ultimate goal is to have 6 months' worth of living expenses in an emergency fund in cash outside of retirement accounts and a years' worth of living expenses in short-term bonds, CDs, and cash equivalents inside the retirement account just in case. But the amount of cash I currently have in retirement is more than that, so in the near future, I need to invest some of that, probably in an intermediate bond fund.

There is a cool tool that is useful in rebalancing that I discovered a couple of years ago. It is called "Financial Engines," and it was developed by Economics Nobel Prize winner Bill Sharpe, and they work with many of the big retirement plan companies and big corporations to provide advice, based on Monte Carlo similations, to employees. Now I'm not saying it's a perfect tool--it IS a bit of work initially to get set up, and there are things that it won't ask about...see

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2002/tc200... for a good review...but it does a pretty good job of keeping up with how your account balances are changing IF you are not adding to them, and it provides easy access to research on various funds. This is a product that is typically offered free to employees of Fortune 500 companies as an employee benefit, or individuals can buy plans for themselves starting at $39/year, but you can get a free account at http://www.terrysavage.com--click the blue financial engines button . Once you sign up and input your data and goals, they'll mail you quarterly reports with a scorecard saying how likely their simulations say you are to reach your retirement goals. Anyways, I find it useful for taking a look at my accounts, and so I pass the information on to those of you who may find it useful as well.