The plan your portfolio answers to
An investment policy,
written down.
Pensions and endowments have run on a written Investment Policy Statement for decades. A self-directed household needs the same thing, for the same reason: it turns scattered intentions into a policy you can be held to - including by your future self, in the moment a market drop or a hot tip is testing your discipline.
Draft yours free in a few minutes. No positions, no brokerage login.
What a working IPS records
Four decisions, made once, on the record.
The IPS does not pick securities or time the market. It sets the boundaries inside which those decisions get made - so the next one is made from the answer you wrote down when you were calm.
- Objectives. What the money is for, the return you are aiming for, and the time horizon - in plain language, not a number you reverse-engineer later.
- Risk capacity, tolerance, and need. Three different questions most templates blur into one slider: how much loss your situation can absorb, how much volatility you can live with, and how much return the plan actually requires.
- Sell rules and never-sell rules. The discipline you hold yourself to - a single-position ceiling, what triggers a review, the holdings you will not sell regardless. Your rules, recorded and later checked against your actual holdings.
- Tax-location rules. Which kinds of assets you prefer to hold in taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free accounts - the placement your asset-location surface compares your portfolio against.
A template, then a governing document
Start from a draft. Make it the policy.
The free IPS Generator drafts a starting plan from a few inputs - somewhere far better than a blank page. Inside Ironlake, the guided IPS Builder turns that draft into your governing document: finalized versions are immutable and effective-dated, so your policy history is preserved rather than overwritten, and the allocation, rebalancing, and tax surfaces all reference the rules you set.
New to the idea? Read what an Investment Policy Statement is, or walk the full build in build your investment plan. Ironlake records and checks against your rules; it never tells you what to buy or sell.