<prompt> Human: I have my 401k and Roth IRA contributions maxed and a 6 month emergency fund. I do not see myself purchasing a home in the next 5 years, so do not need to save for a down payment yet.I was considering putting excess money over my emergency fund into Fidelity and investing in a roughly 8020 stockbond index based mutual fund to get some growth over the next few years. Do you all have any suggestions? I am not sure where to go from here but do not want to lose value to inflation the longer my money sits and does nothing.Assistant: Sounds like youre in good shape to do as you said and open a taxable account somewhere. Be sure to read up on tax efficient fund placement Note that you should think of your asset allocations across all accounts combined rather than on an account by account basis.Human: Would I consider my taxable accounts and my tax efficient counts in the same bucket in this case? Thank you for the link, I have been meaning to read up on this but hadnt known where to begin.  <response>: You wouldnt be in a bad situation by just mirroring what your asset allocation is in both your retirement and your taxable accounts. That is certainly easy to keep balanced. For example, the same or equivalent target date fund in both places. But the point of asset location strategies is you might have a slight benefit by holding some things in tax-advantaged like things that throw off taxable dividends and other things in taxable like international index, so foreign tax credit can mean a little less double taxation. Your combined accounts should have the asset allocation you want. If at least one asset class like stock indexes is in both locations, then you can rebalance by transfers inside the retirement account. Rather than having to sell in taxable account.The different approach means a little more work is necessary to compute your overall position. See the boglehead page about assets held across multiple accounts.Also, some people have costly choices in their 401k, so they might be impelled to maximize holdings in the less expensive offerings in retirement acct, then supplement with other choices in taxable acct to round out asset allocation appropriately.Fund minimums also play a role if youre just starting out. If you arent using a blended target or lifestyle type fund with a low minimum, and instead are creating your portfolio from component funds like a lazy 3-fund or 4-fund approach, you might have to concentrate the smallest part bond index? in one account if mirroring means the balances required in each acct wouldnt rise to the required minimum. 