The Big Investment Mistakes Made In Retirement

The Big Investment Mistakes Made In Retirement

Taking too much risk with your investment: We all want the highest interest rate possible and the lowest risk possible – unfortunately these are competing objectives. High rates always spell high risk BUT high risk does not always spell high rates. You should know that risk and reward are traveling companions: if you want low risk you’ve got to settle for low rates and if you want the chance of making high rates you’ve got to accept high risk.

Most people work a lifetime to save enough so they can have a comfortable retirement – the last thing in the world they want is to lose their retirement nest egg in bad investments. So why is it that most retirees have all their money in mutual funds, stock, bonds, a diversified portfolio of securities, variable annuities, etc.? All these things carry the risk of loss – yeah I know that “in the long run” you’ll do a lot better than with a safe money alternative. BUT, in retirement you don’t have a long run. A great economist once said, “in the long run we’re all dead”.

In the closing years of the 1900′s and up until 2002 the stock market was roaring upward – would-be-retirees were making loads of paper profits and looking forward to retirement next year. Out of the blue came the dot.com bust and a market meltdown – over the next two years the S