Your nest egg
Semi-retirement / retirement is a time to think carefully about where your money is invested. Your years of building a nest egg are probably over and now's the time to start living off the money you have accumulated - your financial portfolio.
For most semi-retired / retired people with modest levels of savings, the important issues are likely to include:
- Reducing the risk of losing your money
- Maintaining a consistent cash income
- Protecting your savings and income from inflation
- Easy access to your money if the need arises.
During your saving years, you may have had much of your money invested in 'growth' assets. These are things like shares and property that rise in value over the years but may not generate as much regular income as some other types of investments. Now you're retired you may want more of your money invested in things that do generate regular income - so that you can live off your savings. You may also want to lower the amount of risk. At the same time you want to earn a good return on your investments and be able to choose the best time to sell them.
To determine the best way to manage your nest egg, you may want to think about how much you depend on your savings and investments to afford the retirement lifestyle you want. Use this as a guide for how much risk you are prepared to take. If you are highly dependent on your nest egg, or some of it, you probably can't afford to take any risks with this money. However, if you are in reasonable financial shape and have money that you don't depend on, you may choose to continue to invest in 'growth' assets.
How much risk can you afford?
As a general rule of thumb, the more dependent you are on your nest egg, the more conservative your investment approach should be.
You need to be more certain about the outcome. However, even if you don't rely on this money, you still need to be able to sleep at night. If that is an issue then the 'price' for extra security will probably be lower returns.
In this section you can also read about:
- Spending your savings
The main reason you have saved for retirement is so you can spend your savings in retirement - Returns versus volatility
Volatility in a nest egg portfolio is something you should expect. But it needs to be managed - Your investment strategy
The strategy you choose will depend on how much of a nest egg you have and how much you depend on it to afford the lifestyle you want - Using the Nest egg calculator
You can use our Managing your nest egg calculator to get an indication of how much you can spend each year from now. But first, check out what we have and haven't taken into account.
