Investing in Your 40s: Realign Your Priorities

As the wise meme puts it, 40 is the new 20! In addition to gaining wisdom, experience, and confidence, you’ll find that these are your peak earning years, when your professional and financial situation are at their most stable.

This is the perfect time for smart financial planning where you diversify your portfolio to achieve the retirement lifestyle you envision. And even if you have only now begun to think about investing, there are several ways you can still save a significant amount towards your future; the important thing is to know what works best for you at this age.

Recalibrating your financial sensors

At this point, your priorities will be your children’s educational future and your retirement (which you may have thought about earlier, as mentioned in our previous article). However, you might be putting their future above your own. Consider this:

they can always take out student loans, or work part-time to fund their lives; meanwhile, your options might be limited by the time you hit the pensionable age.

You have to prioritise your own financial future or risk burdening your children with your future needs. In fact, the wellbeing of your offspring may be better served both by your frugality and by teaching them about loan management and wealth planning.

Sit down with a financial advisor to understand the real costs of retirement and realign accordingly so you can ensure that your needs are met while still being able to enjoy an occasional indulgence.

Don’t be passive about getting aggressive

Face it, you’re not really THAT old – but you may be feeling your age more (“Why am I creaking so much?!?”). This can make you more cautious about what kind of investments to prioritise.

Fear may make you want to invest the least amount possible, but prioritising your future requires that you take a more holistic approach to investing. You can build an investment amount through careful budgeting so it won’t jeopardise your current needs should it not pay off, as well funnelling any secondary income toward investments as well.

Diversifying your portfolio

Relying on just one investment is short-sighted. You know better than to keep all your eggs in one basket – so you should apply this logic to your portfolio as well.

In fact, a few aggressive high-risk investments that will generate high returns are a legitimate way to diversify your portfolio. What needs to happen is that you must identify your personal risk tolerance levels and match that to a realistic timeframe – all of which will help you invest accordingly to achieve your goals.

If you have invested in a piece of property, you should consider investing in more; after all, this type of asset has always been a reliable source of income that can double as a hedge against rising costs. Additionally, there are different assets that you can include in your portfolio: stock types from many different sectors; fixed income securities/fixed deposits (FDs) that yield more stable incomes, etc.

KDI: The only constant you need

The best thing for you would be an investment product that offers you superior risk management – and as luck will have it, KDI Invest fits the bill. This robo-advisor uses algorithmic investing to estimate your portfolio’s volatility while keeping your preferred risk preferences at the forefront.

KDI Invest’s Artificial Intelligence-driven tool selects U.S.-based equity-traded funds (ETFs) that have shown reliably steady market behaviour. Plus, as a robo-advisor it cannot be influenced in any way by emotions like fear or anxiety.

Another advantage is that the robo-advisor works within the very data-rich area of ETFs that give you access to well-known companies – including Facebook, Apple, and Google. Knowing where your money is going can give you the reassurance you need to feel secure about continuing to diversify your portfolio.

So, although you may feel that it’s time to hunker down and become an immovable object, you can still afford to do an ABBA and take a chance on your portfolio. After all, the result could potentially be more of that other ABBA hit: money, money, money!