Читать книгу Investing For Dummies - Eric Tyson - Страница 76

No hard-and-fast rules dictate how to allocate the percentage that you’ve earmarked for growth among specific investments like stocks and real estate. Part of how you decide to allocate your investments depends on the types of investments that you want to focus on. As I discuss in Chapter 5, diversifying in stocks worldwide can be prudent as well as profitable.

Here are some general guidelines to keep in mind:

 Take advantage of your retirement accounts. Unless you need accessible money for shorter-term non-retirement goals, why pass up the free extra returns from the tax benefits of retirement accounts?

 Don’t pile your money into investments that have gained lots of attention. Many investors make this mistake, especially those who lack a thought-out plan to buy stocks. In Chapter 5, I provide numerous illustrations of the perils of buying attention-grabbing stocks.

 Have the courage to be a contrarian. No one likes to feel that he is jumping on board a sinking ship or supporting a losing cause. However, just as in shopping for something at retail stores, the best time to buy something of quality is when its price is reduced.

 Diversify. As I discuss in Chapter 2, the values of different investments don’t move in tandem. So when you invest in growth investments, such as stocks or real estate, your portfolio’s value will have a smoother ride if you diversify properly.

 Invest more in what you know. Over the years, I’ve met successful investors who have built substantial wealth without spending gobs of their free time researching, selecting, and monitoring investments. For example, some investors concentrate more on real estate because that’s what they best understand and feel comfortable with. Others put more money in stocks for the same reason. No one-size-fits-all code exists for successful investors. Just be careful that you don’t put all your investing eggs in the same basket (for example, don’t load up on stocks in the same industry that you believe you know a lot about).

 Don’t invest in too many different things. Diversification is good to a point. But if you purchase so many investments that you can’t perform a basic annual review of all of them (for example, reading the annual reports from your mutual and exchange-traded funds), you have too many investments.

 Be more aggressive with investments inside retirement accounts. When you hit your retirement years, you’ll probably begin to live off your non-retirement account investments first. Allowing your retirement accounts to continue growing can generally save you tax dollars. Therefore, you should be relatively less aggressive with investments outside of retirement accounts because that money may be invested for a shorter time period.