8 Best Vanguard Funds for Retirement

Vanguard customers, especially retirees who want income-producing funds, can rest easy.

Vanguard customers, especially retirees who want income-producing funds, can rest easy. Between the firm’s many index funds and its actively managed portfolios, investors have plenty of good choices including the eight mutual funds highlighted here. Two are pure stock funds; two others own a mix of stocks and bonds; and the remaining four are bond funds. We also recommend three exchange-traded funds as suitable alternatives to some of the mutual funds. None should fill all of your income needs, but you can use some of them to build a diversified portfolio that works for you. Click through to the end to see our model income portfolio.

We focus on Vanguard’s actively managed funds. Although they’re not as cheap as the firm’s index funds, their expense ratios are still remarkably low. Take a look.

Disclaimer

Funds are listed in alphabetical order. All prices, returns, yields and portfolio data are through May 4. Data is for each fund’s Investor share class, which requires a $3,000 initial minimum investment. Lower-cost Admiral shares are available for all but one of the funds (Vanguard Dividend Growth); they have a $50,000 minimum.

Nellie S. Huang
Senior Associate Editor, Kiplinger's Personal Finance

Nellie joined Kiplinger in August 2011 after a seven-year stint in Hong Kong. There, she worked for the Wall Street Journal Asia, where as lifestyle editor, she launched and edited Scene Asia, an online guide to food, wine, entertainment and the arts in Asia. Prior to that, she was an editor at Weekend Journal, the Friday lifestyle section of the Wall Street Journal Asia. Kiplinger isn't Nellie's first foray into personal finance: She has also worked at SmartMoney (rising from fact-checker to senior writer), and she was a senior editor at Money.