Goals and asset allocation
16 articles
How to Conduct an Annual Portfolio Review
A review is not an occasion to replace whatever disappointed. It is a check on whether the plan still fits the life, and in most years the correct outcome is a short list of adjustments and a decision to continue.
5 min read
How to Build a Simple Goal-Based Investment Portfolio
Most portfolios are collections of things that were bought at some point, not structures designed to deliver anything. Building one properly starts at the goal and works backwards, and it usually ends up smaller than expected.
6 min read
How to Estimate the Future Cost of a Financial Goal
Today's price is not the number to plan against. Working out what a goal will cost when it actually arrives is the step that makes every other part of the plan meaningful — and the step most often done once and never revisited.
6 min read
Calendar or Threshold Rebalancing: What Changes?
One rule says look on a date. The other says act when the portfolio has moved too far. The choice matters less than most discussions of it suggest, and the part that does matter is not the part people argue about.
6 min read
How to Choose an Asset Allocation for a Financial Goal
The split between growth and stability is the decision that determines most of what a portfolio does. It should come from what the money is for and what losing some of it would cost — not from an age, and not from a questionnaire.
6 min read
How to Choose an Inflation Assumption for a Financial Goal
Every long-term plan rests on a guess about how fast prices will rise, and most people make that guess once and never look at it again. The record shows why a single number is the wrong shape of answer.
7 min read
What Is a Goal-Date Glide Path and When Should Risk Fall?
A portfolio that was right for a goal fifteen years away is wrong for the same goal eighteen months away. A glide path is the decision to change it on a schedule rather than on a feeling.
5 min read
How Portfolio Rebalancing Controls Risk
A portfolio left alone does not stay where you put it. The asset that has done well grows into a larger share of the whole, and the risk you agreed to becomes a risk you did not.
6 min read
How Step-Up Contributions Change a Future Corpus
Raising the amount you invest each year is the most reliable lever anyone has over a long-term goal. It is also the one most often left as an intention, and the difference between intending it and automating it is the whole effect.
5 min read
How Much Must You Invest Each Month for a Future Goal?
A calculator turns a goal, a date and a return assumption into a single monthly figure. The first two are yours. The third is a guess, and the range around it is wide enough that the precise answer on the screen is the least reliable part of the exercise.
6 min read
How to Plan for a Child's Education Costs in Stages
An education is not one bill. Treating it as a single future amount produces a total that is wrong and a portfolio that cannot deliver it, and both errors come from the same place.
6 min read
How to Plan Financially for Elderly Parents
The work here is mostly not financial. It is finding out what exists, making sure more than one person can reach it, and having the conversation while there is still time to have it calmly.
7 min read
How to Plan for Overseas Education Costs and Currency Risk
An overseas degree is an education goal with a second uncertainty stacked on top of it. The exchange rate can move the cost by more than the fees do, and it moves in a direction nobody can plan around by forecasting.
6 min read
How to Plan for Recurring Lifestyle Goals Without Derailing Core Goals
Travel, replacements, celebrations and upgrades feel like exceptions. They arrive every year, and treating each as a surprise is what makes them expensive.
6 min read
How to Prioritise Retirement, Education, Housing and Other Goals
Almost nobody can fund every goal at once. A priority order is not a statement of what matters most emotionally — it is a decision, made in advance, about which goal absorbs the damage when the money is short.
6 min read
How to Rebalance a Portfolio Using New Investments First
The cheapest rebalancing trade is the one you never have to make. Money arriving each month can hold a portfolio near its target for years before anything needs selling.
6 min read