The primary goal of asset location is to increase the tax-efficiency of your portfolio, at least it will be for most people. You want to pay the lowest amount of tax on your chosen asset allocation.
The latter can be further broken down into tax-deferred accounts in which you typically get a tax deduction upfront and owe tax upon withdrawal or a tax-free account in which you place after-tax monies and pay no tax upon withdrawal.
I’ll admit to not knowing much about investing when I first had real money to invest. I knew enough to avoid big mistakes, but I never considered a more advanced question such as the one we’re answering today.
Since I keep most of money with Vanguard, I was able to choose popular index funds in the international and domestic stock categories that I currently have or have previously held in my own accounts.