I’ve spent more than 40 years watching people make investing mistakes. Most of them aren’t the kind you’d think.
It’s not the lottery-ticket stocks or the crypto plunges that wreck retirements. Those are loud, but they’re rare.
The quiet wreckers are different.
A 58-year-old who panic-sells in March of a bad year and never gets back in. A 64-year-old who watched friends get rich in tech and quietly moved 100% of their portfolio into one sector. A 67-year-old who’s been earning 0.05% in a savings account for 15 years because they “don’t trust the market.”
I’ve seen all three on Wall Street, from viewer questions when I did TV news, and in emails since. The damage doesn’t show up overnight. It shows up at 75, when the money runs out.
Here’s the question I get more than almost any other: At my age, how should I be invested? Here are six things to get right.
1. Don’t run for cash because you’re scared
This is the single biggest mistake older investors make. The market drops, the headlines scream, and they pull everything out and stuff it in a money market account. Then they wait — for clarity, for safety, for the right moment.
That moment never comes. Meanwhile, the market recovers, and they watch it from the sidelines.
According to Fidelity’s Q2 2025 retirement analysis, only 5.4% of plan participants changed their asset mix despite ongoing market volatility. The other 94.6% — the ones who stayed put — got the recovery.
Stay invested. Adjust your mix if you need to. But don’t go to all cash.
2. Don’t stay 100% in stocks either
The opposite mistake. People who lived through long bull markets sometimes get convinced stocks always come back, so what’s the harm in being all in?
The harm is sequence-of-returns risk. Experiencing a market drop in the early years of retirement can create problems that go beyond the immediate hit to your portfolio — potentially to the point where your portfolio may not last as long as you need.
A 50% market drop in your first year of retirement, while you’re pulling money out to live on, can permanently damage your portfolio’s ability to last 30 years.
It doesn’t matter that the market eventually recovers. You sold shares at the bottom to pay your bills, and those shares are gone.
You need some growth. You also need some ballast.
3. Pick a real allocation and stick to it
The old “your age in bonds” rule (60 years old means 60% bonds) is too conservative for most people now. We’re living longer and bond yields have been historically low. As we recently covered, more than half of pre-retirees say the old “100 minus your age” formula no longer fits today’s environment.
Per Empower data, the average investor in their 50s holds 38% in U.S. stocks and 9% in international stocks. Investors in their 60s hold 35% in U.S. stocks and 8.7% in international, with bonds rising to about 13%.
Those are averages, not prescriptions.
A reasonable framework for someone five to 10 years out from retirement: 50% to 70% in stocks (split between U.S. and international), with the rest in bonds and cash.
As you get closer to retirement, gradually shift more toward bonds and cash. The exact percentages matter less than picking something defensible and not abandoning it the next time the market tanks.
Quick aside — most internet financial advice comes from people who weren’t alive during the last recession. I’ve been writing about money for more than 40 years. Want rock-solid advice? Sign up for the free Money Talks Newsletter. Takes 10 seconds. No fluff. No spam.
4. Build a cash bucket before you retire
This is the single most underappreciated move. Before you start drawing from your portfolio, set aside one to three years of living expenses in cash or short-term Treasurys. When the market drops, you spend from the cash bucket and let your stocks recover. When the market is up, you refill the bucket.
This isn’t market timing. It’s structural protection against the worst version of sequence-of-returns risk. It’s the difference between a portfolio that survives a bad first decade and one that doesn’t.
5. Consider just buying a target-date fund and walking away
I’m a huge fan of simplicity, especially for people who, unlike me, don’t enjoy investing. A target-date fund picks a year close to your retirement (2035, 2040, etc.), holds a diversified mix of stocks and bonds, and gradually shifts toward conservative as you age. It’s set-it-and-forget-it.
According to Kiplinger’s reporting on Fidelity data, in the fourth quarter of 2025, 63% of Fidelity 401(k) participants had all their money invested in a target-date fund. That’s not because target-date funds are perfect. It’s because they prevent people from making bigger mistakes.
If you don’t want to think about your portfolio every quarter, this is a perfectly fine answer. Just make sure the fund’s fees are low — 0.20% or lower is reasonable.
6. Stop chasing performance
The investor who moves out of bonds and into stocks after stocks have run for two years just bought high. The one who moves into international after international beats the U.S. just bought high. The one who buys gold after gold rallies 40% just bought high.
Pick an allocation that matches your timeline and risk tolerance. Rebalance once a year. Ignore the talking heads. The single best predictor of long-term investment returns isn’t picking the right stocks — it’s not making the wrong moves at the wrong time.
For a closer look at why holding through volatility matters, we’ve covered several ways to shield your savings from market turmoil without going to all cash.
The mistake I’ve seen wreck more retirements than any single bad investment is a series of emotional decisions. Sell when scared. Buy when excited. Repeat.
The boring portfolio — diversified, periodically rebalanced, mostly ignored — beats the exciting one over 30 years. Almost every time. That’s not a get-rich-quick story. It’s a get-rich-eventually story. And at 50+, eventually is exactly the timeline you have.
