Tips to follow the rule of 100 when investing
Sun May 10, 2009 | | Posted in Finances Invest
Basically, the rule of 100 states that you take your age and subtract it from 100 to arrive at the approximate percentage of your portfolio that should be held in stocks. The rest should be allocated to cash and high-quality income and bonds.
So a 25-year old who is just starting out in life, would have roughly 75% of his/her assets in stocks and higher-risk assets, with 25% reserved for cash and secure income options.
Conversely, a 75-year-old would have just 25% of his/her assets in stocks, with the balance in short-term income. The idea, of course, is that as you get older, your portfolio should become more conservative.
Very few investors follow this rule. On the contrary, recently we have known now that at any age, investors have lost a lot of money just because they were so heavily invested in stocks.
When the credit crisis just started to unfold, many 65-year-old retirees had 60%, 70%, even 80% of their assets in stocks. Many of them were customers of large national brokerage firms.
In fact, it has been estimated that one of the reasons many financial advisers don’t push more conservative, income-oriented products is that they generally don’t carry the fees that stocks and stock mutual funds do.
In a Nutshell
Of course, individuals live longer today than when the “Rule of 100” was first created, but the basic idea is unchanged. Even in the most bullish of bull environments, how can a 75-year-old really have 75% of his/her assets in stocks?
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Information contained herein is general in nature, and is provided for informational and educational purposes only. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Talk to your financial adviser.
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