Cooking The Books

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's how a rule of thumb can give guidance on your personal investing strategy. Hosted by Frances Cook.Time is everything when you're investing. Long-time podcast listeners will have heard it here before - the longer you have, the more that risky investments will be right for you, like shares or property. If you have less time, a lower risk investment like bonds or term deposits are usually the suggestion. Well if you're looking for more detail on this idea, there's a rule of thumb that some people like to use. It's the rule of 100, or, 100 minus age. It means that if you take 100, subtract your age, then what's left is the percentage of your investments that should be higher risk, because you have the time to build your wealth like that. So for me, at 31, the suggestion is 69 per cent of my investments going into higher risk options. But like any rule of thumb, there are exceptions, there's fine prin