Читать книгу Personal Finance After 50 For Dummies - Eric Tyson - Страница 93

When purchasing a new investment, make sure you consider your overall financial plan. Investors often read articles or get tips from colleagues and wind up buying some of those investments. Investing without doing sufficient homework leads to a hodgepodge portfolio that’s often not properly diversified, among other problems. Failure to make an overall plan usually results in a recipe for failure, not success.

For example, when Eric worked as a financial planner/counselor, he was surprised at how often he’d meet with clients who had excess cash in low-interest money market funds or savings accounts while they carried high-cost debts, such as auto loans and credit-card balances. He was able to convince many of them to pay down the high-cost debt after he showed them how much they could save or make by doing so. (This same logic holds for older, more conservative investors who can pay down mortgages.)

Likewise, Eric found that investors who preferred individual stocks would fret when one of their holdings fell. Because such investors wouldn’t examine their overall portfolio’s performance, too frequently they would unnecessarily dump a currently depressed stock. They’d dwell on that stock’s recent decline and overlook how little impact this one holding had on their overall portfolio.

This strategy is particularly dangerous if you fail to consider the big picture and overinvest in employer stock. You may think you’re being a loyal team player, but watch out. This strategy is hazardous because a company that falls on hard times may not only lead to the loss of a job but also to the loss of retirement assets when the stock takes a permanent nose dive. As you approach your senior years, investing more than 10 percent of your financial assets in your employer’s stock is usually too risky unless you can truly afford the risk.