On: How to increase your luck surface area (2010)

[devlopr]

That's why you move from a risky stock portfolio to a safer bold driven portfolio as your age increases.

[throwaway2245 → devlopr]

This helps, but not that much. (Assuming your risk assessment is correct)

Suppose a shock happened right before I planned to shift into a safer portfolio. What do I do then?

The only really correct answer is: "well, I didn't need that money anyway."

[stouset → throwaway2245]

There shouldn't be an exact moment you switch to a conservative portfolio. As you get nearer to retirement, you gradually rebalance. Often this is as easy as simply placing new contributions in safer investments. Less often it just involves exchanging one set of funds for another, say once per year.

Again, Target Retirement funds handle this completely transparently for you and require literally zero hands-on involvement.

This is quite simply nowhere near as hard as you're making it out to be.

[throwaway2245 → stouset]

> This is quite simply nowhere near as hard as you're making it out to be.

I'm going to quote a (sarcastic) reply to another of your comments:

"This is easy. Just find a job that pays you $350,000 a year."

If you have plenty of wealth and income, then it's easy.

But then, if you have plenty of wealth and income, it doesn't really matter what you do.

[devlopr → throwaway2245]

The idea is you are always shifting rebalancing.

If you are 45 you might be at 50/50 (safe/risky growth) by 55 25/75 by 60 90% is safe.

If something happens at 60 where you lose 50% of the 10% in growth stocks stats show that a 5 year recovery to base levels is likely.