Assessing your retirement portfolio is critical to maintaining the correct level of savings and acceptable risk on your portfolio as we near retirement. The World we live in changes constantly, inflation changes, interest rates change and new retirement investments products come onto the market regularly, meaning that you should be consulting with your financial planner/bank on a regular basis to be sure that firstly your savings are growing at a rate that will still allow you to retire comfortably.
As we progress through life and near retirement it is important to address the risk associated with some of your retirement investments, the closer you get to retirement, the less risk you may want in your portfolio and by assessing your growth and investment mix regularly allows you to make adjustments to your portfolio in line with your expectations.
We are living longer, bond yields are way off their highs, interest rates are at their lowest in decades, costs of investing are high and annuity rates are increasing. Put all of this together and the bottom line is, “the cost of retirement is increasing”. You really only have three options, the first is to invest in products that offer higher returns/lower costs with an acceptable risk for your life stage, to save more or to save for longer.
Here are some ideas for you to discuss with your financial planner:
The exchange traded investment vehicles: Exchange traded funds (ETF’s), Exchange traded notes (ETN’s)
What makes these investments attractive is the lower costs associated with investing and the fact that there has been a marked increase of over 270% in trade volumes since institutional investors have been able to included ETF’s in their retirement products.
The overall answer is to start saving for retirement as early as possible and to keep track of these investments performance regularly, adjusting the risk as you progress through life. It is your future, pay attention to your investments.
