SCHP vs TIP

SCHP (Schwab) and TIP (iShares) both hold Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities across the full maturity range. TIPS adjust their principal with the Consumer Price Index, so both funds are designed to preserve purchasing power when inflation rises.

Because they track very similar broad TIPS indexes, their duration, credit quality (US government), and yield behavior are almost the same. This is a close comparison decided at the margins.

SCHP carries a lower expense ratio than TIP. For an asset class where expected real returns are modest, minimizing cost matters proportionally more than it does for equities.

TIP is older and more heavily traded, which gives it slightly tighter spreads — a minor consideration for buy-and-hold investors but relevant if you trade large blocks.

Both funds carry intermediate duration, meaning they still fall when real interest rates rise — as investors learned in 2022, when TIPS dropped despite high inflation. They hedge inflation, not interest-rate risk.

For a dedicated inflation sleeve in strategies like the All Weather or Swensen portfolios, SCHP's lower cost makes it a marginally better default, while TIP remains a perfectly good choice.