re: Company sponsored Vanguard 401(k) plan question...

The first thing to understand what the target retirement funds do. They create a portfolio based on average risk and target date. They start off with a high stock to bond ratio and as you get closer to the target date move the assets more towards bonds.

Next, you have to ask yourself is how much risk are you comfortable with. The target retirement funds are only good if your risk matches the fund manager's idea of average risk.

If you are comfortable with a higher risk than average, but want to stay hands off, you can go with a fund with a later target date, like 2055 or 2060. If you want less risk, then switch to 2030 or 2035.

I'm no financial adviser, but I wouldn't think it would take much time to have a more hands on approach to your 401k. I have my 401k in 5 funds. Two of them are target date fund that combine for 25% of my contributions, and the other 3 are non-target date funds that get 25% each. I look at them each quarter just to see how they are doing, then at the end of the year to make sure one of them just isn't tanking compared to the market. Some people may tweak the allocation every year, but anything more than that is just trying to time the market, which you can't rely on doing that.