Hi, roweyourboat, and welcome to the TRPeepz.  Love your handle!  Do you prefer Happy Coffee in regular or decaff?

Miss Lorna brings up an excellent point, as always:  when a talented manager leaves, what happens to the fund?  From my experience with TRP over the years, I've found that, at least for the particular funds I hold and have held, it hasn't been that big of a difference.  TRP seems to have a sound "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy.  

As far as the Personal Strategy Funds go, one of the reasons I like them is that you have the same core concepts of investing, simply with a different asset allocation in each.  At some stage of your life, Growth could be the best.  As you near retirement, moving to Balanced is a better choice for many.  During Retirement, a period of life getting longer and longer,  in order to keep some growth along with income, the Income offering could be a solid selection.

My semi-educated guess is that down the road, we could see some tweaks (hopefully GOOD tweaks) in the Strategy family yet the fundamentals will remain the same.

Kinda like Lorna's Wonder Cookies and my Happy Coffee recipes...

;)

Hetty

Lorna, Hetty, & Roweyourboat,

It seems like we had this same discussion last year about PRWCX.  The investors that bailed on PRWCX are probably second guessing themselves right now.  I would think that PRWCX would be more vulnerable to Manager risk than one of the Personal Strategy or Retirement funds.  

One of the reasons I like TRP is because whether it is a team managed fund like the Personal Strategy funds or has a one manager like PRXCX, TRP has a deep support staff behind all of their fund managers. Ususally most managers are groomed for years before they are allowed to fly solo.

This lessens manager risk and makes manager transitions very smooth. Even the best and largest fund families including TRP have poor performers, but for the most part TRP has had great success in manager transitions and quality control. 

If these funds fit your investment strategy, I would ride them until they prove themselves unfit.

helmut

Thanks everyone! I feel more confident now in my T. Rowe picks. I'm thinking of looking into some combination of the Spectrum funds too. The more I look at different T. Rowe funds and combinations and try to decide which might be right for me, it seems like an embarrassment of riches: so many of the funds look strong, so many choices one could make, and all would probably be equally good. My biggest challenge may be resisting the inclination to tinker and second guess too much!

My biggest challenge may be resisting the inclination to tinker and second guess too much!

Whenever the urge to "tinker and second guess" starts to overcome you, lie down in a quiet place and take deep breaths, or go for a long walk, or pick up a page-turner mystery, or call a friend, or . . .

You have probably already read articles about the fact that "tinkerers" end up worse off than they would have been if they had left things alone.  Now that I think about it, maybr this forum (and similar ones) is partly a support group for recoverng "tinkerers" who have seen the error of their ways.

so many choices one could make, and all would probably be equally good.  

A caveat about this:  It is hard for me to imagine that all of the choices would be equally good for you.  You have obviously already done some thinking about this, so keep your own goals in mind.  Remember, even the marvelous, intelligent, informative, kind-hearted, good-looking contributors to this forum have different life situations than you do. 

Best wishes,  Lorna