Life rarely goes as planned, but moving forward with no idea of where you want to end up is never the way to go. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.” That’s especially true when it comes to saving and investing. Wealth isn’t typically built overnight. It takes a series of deliberate moves over time. With that in mind, we’ve crafted a game plan for how best to save and invest at every stage of life.
But first, know that there are several good-practice tenets that apply to all stages. Among them:
Take advantage of free money. No matter what stage of life you’re in, if you have access to a 401(k) or other employer-sponsored retirement-savings plan, aim to contribute at least enough money to earn the full company match — most employers offer one. Many employers contribute to a health savings account, too, if you’re eligible for one.
Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free E-Newsletters
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more – straight to your e-mail.
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice – straight to your e-mail.
Automate your savings. There will always be a rationale to put off saving. In your twenties, it’s that you have decades to go before retiring. In your middle years, it’s the financial demands of a house and family. Later, it may be that bucket-list trip you’ve always dreamed of. “People have limited willpower and discipline. Make a one-time good decision and automate your savings,” says SoFi’s Brian Walsh, a certified financial planner. Just as your 401(k) contributions are deducted automatically from your paycheck, you can set up recurring transfers from your bank account to an IRA, a taxable brokerage account or a 529 college-savings plan.
Save more with every pay raise. The more we make, the more we spend. To keep “spending creep” in check as your income grows, make it a habit to carve out a certain amount of each salary hike for savings first. If you get a raise, set aside one-third to one-half of it to increase your savings. “What young professionals do with future raises has a bigger impact on future savings goals than how much they save today,” says Walsh. Most 401(k) plans allow you to set up automatic annual increases to your contribution.
Maintain an emergency fund. Conventional wisdom is that you should have at least three to six months’ worth of expenses in cash sitting in a high-yield savings account or money market fund. It’s to cover emergencies — a car repair, a new furnace or other sudden expenses. But the stash can help keep your investing plans on track, too. It provides peace of mind, and it may keep you from making a bad money decision, such as selling in a down market, tapping your retirement savings to cover a needed house repair or running up a balance on your credit cards. How much cash you need sitting on the sidelines varies, depending on your situation.
Keep the long game in mind. Fight the urge to watch the market too closely. “Investing goals aren’t day to day, so don’t get wrapped up in the day-to-day fluctuations of the stock market. It sounds cliché, but slow and steady wins the race,” says Bobbi Rebell, a CFP with BadCredit.org.
With a good grounding in the basics, investors can better focus on best practices specific to their age and stage in life. Read on for how to save and invest, whether you’re just starting your first job, raising a family or navigating retirement.
Starting out with investing
You’ve landed your first job or are only a few years into building your career. Even if your paycheck doesn’t show it, consider yourself lucky. In your twenties or thirties, you have the biggest investing advantage on your side: a long time horizon.
Saving strategies. Start putting away money, even if it’s just a little, for the long term by investing in your workplace retirement plan. If you don’t have one, open an individual retirement account at a brokerage firm. In general, younger investors will do better with a Roth IRA, which allows you to make after-tax contributions and grows tax-free. Though a traditional IRA offers a tax deduction on your contributions, chances are your tax rate is low, minimizing the benefit. “The biggest thing is to just get started,” says Tim Steffen at Baird Private Wealth Management.
Generally, people just starting out don’t earn much and tend to give saving short shrift. But there’s probably no easier time to do it, says Rebell. “Young people say they have too little money to save. I tell them the percentage of their income that’s discretionary will never be higher.” You may have college loans to pay off, but expenses for a home and kids are likely still in your future. “It’s the best time to save money. Later in life, you may not get a choice. It’s either save or buy your kid braces.”
The main reason to start saving early, even if it’s just $10 or $25 a month, is the time value of money — the idea that a dollar today is more valuable than it will be in the future because inflation hasn’t yet eroded its value, and because of the returns that dollar can earn over time. But starting early has other benefits, too. “It’s about taking advantage of a combination of things — the time value of money, the benefit of compounding returns over time, and having ample recovery time for market declines,” says Catherine Irby Arnold, a Seattle-based adviser with U.S. Bank’s private wealth management division. “If you start investing in your twenties, you have a better chance of building a comfortable nest egg. If you wait until you’re 50, it’s harder to do.” You can’t buy more time.
Of course, the more you save, the better. “Put in your 401(k) as much as you can,” says Baird’s Steffen, and aim to increase your savings rate over time until you reach 15% of your salary a year. According to T. Rowe Price, a 25-year-old earning $40,000 who saves 6% of her salary every year for the next 40 years will have contributed roughly $200,000 by the time she’s 65. Assuming a 7% rate of return, her portfolio balance would be roughly $1 million. But if she increases her savings rate by just one percentage point every year (until she hits 15% in her mid thirties), her portfolio will top $2 million when she’s 65. Ideally, your portfolio should be worth one to 1½ times your salary by the time you’re 35 and 1½ to 2½ times your salary by the time you’re 40.
If you have competing goals or obligations — student loans, credit card debt, a house down payment — attack them all. “You have to chip away at all of them, otherwise you won’t get to any of them,” says Arnold. Just avoid shutting down your 401(k) contributions — ever. “Once you turn it off it’s hard to turn on again,” says Steffen. Instead, consider dialing back other expenses or getting a side hustle and devoting the extra earnings to the high-rate credit card bills.
Establishing good habits early in your working life will make your financial life easier as you get older. “Paying off debt and saving is a part of everyday life,” says SoFi’s Walsh. “If you can do this when you have little money, you start with good habits for the rest of your life.”
Investing strategies. “In your twenties and thirties, the issue is that you invest rather than how you invest,” says Paul Winter, a CFP in Salt Lake City. Be aggressive. Put 90% to 100% of your long-term savings in stocks or stock funds. “Your portfolio positioning can be at its most aggressive because you have time to recover from even a very steep market decline,” says Eric Figueroa, a CFP in Folsom, Calif. Whether your portfolio’s stock holdings tilt toward 90% or toward 100% will depend on your tolerance for risk. Just bear in mind that if it’s money you won’t touch for decades, you can afford to take on more risk.
Keep it simple. If you’re unsure about what to invest in, buy shares in a broad-market index mutual or exchange-traded fund. Your 401(k) likely includes a low-cost mutual fund that tracks the S&P 500 stock index or a benchmark that represents the total stock market. If you’re investing on your own, consider iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV, $567, expense ratio 0.03%) or Vanguard Total Stock Market Index ETF (VTI, $278, 0.03%), which includes nearly every publicly traded U.S. large-, midsize- and small-company stock.
Another option is to buy a target-date fund, which holds stocks and bonds. Choose the fund with the target year that’s closest to the time you want to retire; a 25-year-old would invest in a 2060- or 2065-dated fund. Experts make the investing decisions and rebalance holdings to an appropriate mix according to your age. Your workplace retirement-savings plan likely offers one, and the target-fund series from most issuers are solid. But if you’re buying a fund on your own, our favorite series are American Funds Target Date Retirement and T. Rowe Price Retirement.
As you grow more comfortable, or maybe more interested in investing, you may want to venture beyond the simplest choices. But pay close attention to staying diversified. Consider adding some small- or midsize-company stocks to your portfolio, for instance. These shares are more volatile than large-company stocks but more rewarding over the long haul, too. We like iShares Core S&P Mid-Cap ETF (IJH, $62, 0.05%) and iShares Core S&P Small-Cap ETF (IJR, $117, 0.06%). When combined with their large-stock counterpart, iShares Core S&P 500 ETF, there’s no overlap in holdings.
Foreign stocks should be a part of a diversified portfolio, too. Stocks in foreign markets have lagged U.S. stocks in recent years, but that won’t always be the case. Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund ETF (VXUS, $63, 0.08%) holds about 8,500 foreign stocks, in both developed and emerging countries.
If you want to be more aggressive, you might consider adding a sector fund to your portfolio that focuses on technology, health care or even energy, says U.S. Bank’s Arnold. “Those sectors are volatile individually, but as a group they work well,” she says, in part because each sector tends to shine in different market environments. Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK, $220, 0.09%) and Health Care Select Sector SDPR ETF (XLV, $157, 0.09%) are both in the Kiplinger ETF 20, the list of our favorite ETFs. For broad-based exposure to energy companies, consider Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE, $91, 0.09%). Fidelity Select Health Care Portfolio (FSPHX, 0.65%) is a member of the Kiplinger 25, the list of our favorite actively managed, no-load mutual funds. Finally, though tech wrecks are a recurring phenomenon in the stock market (witness the recent rout in stocks related to artificial intelligence), investors with long time horizons should consider a Nasdaq index fund. Over the past quarter century, no other broad index has done better than the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100. Consider Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ, $476, 0.20%).
Embrace market volatility, don’t fear it. If you’re stashing money away at regular intervals and spreading your investments over time — a process known as dollar-cost averaging — you’re likely lowering the average cost of the securities you hold. “Volatility is your friend when you’re young,” says Gordon Achtermann, a Fairfax, Va., CFP. You’re compensated for investing aggressively, and you have the luxury of time to recover market declines.
The middle years of building wealth
In your forties and fifties, you are mid career, pulling in good money, but your expenses have never been higher. You’ve got a house and a car, and if you’ve got kids, you’re spending money to give them the best experiences possible and saving for college, too. Don’t worry. Time is still on your side.
Saving strategies. The biggest saving mistake people make at this stage is actually a spending one: Buying too big a house or too nice a car. “What someone spends on where they live and how they get around has the biggest impact on whether they will struggle to live within their means or be comfortable enough to save for the future,” says SoFi’s Walsh. It’s not about skipping the Starbucks runs or dropping Netflix. “You never want to waste money, but if you bring your own coffee to work every day but your car has a $1,000 monthly lease payment, it kind of defeats the purpose,” says Walsh. So focus on keeping the big-ticket expenses at bay.
Don’t sacrifice retirement saving to save for your kid’s college bills. Prioritize your own financial stability first, then fund future tuition. If your kids incur college loans, you can help them pay the debt off if you’ve saved enough for retirement, says Rebell of BadCredit.org. But no one other than you will fund your retirement.
If you add a taxable investment account to your retirement accounts, pay attention to which assets are housed where. In general, stocks you plan to buy and hold, ETFs, foreign fund holdings, and dividend-paying stocks (which typically qualify for preferential tax treatment) can work well in taxable accounts. Try to aggregate mutual funds — especially actively-managed ones — closed-end funds and real estate investment trusts in tax-deferred accounts, where your investments will grow tax-free and you won’t pay Uncle Sam until you sell. If you trade actively, consider doing it through a tax-free Roth. (Though for retirement funds we favor more of a buy-and-hold strategy).
Investing strategies. Generally, investors in their forties should hold roughly 80% to 100% of their retirement savings in stocks and the rest in bonds and cash. With a couple of decades left until quitting day, it’s important to maintain the growth potential of your portfolio with an appropriate allocation to stocks.
But in your mid fifties, unless you have a high tolerance for risk and a large net worth that can weather any kind of volatility, you’ll want to start dialing back your stock allocation. Consider shifting slowly down to 65% to 85% of assets in stocks between ages 55 and 59.
Much depends on where you are on your savings journey. If you’re 55 and just getting started, you can’t afford to “ease your foot off the gas pedal in your portfolio,” says Achtermann. “You’re not going to make it unless you have mostly stocks.” Ideally, at 45, your retirement portfolio should be worth roughly three times your current income, according to T. Rowe Price. At age 50, that jumps to between four and six times your salary; at 55, it’s roughly 4½ to eight times your salary.
If you aren’t close to those milestones, you might need to step up contributions to your 401(k). The maximum in 2024 is $23,000; 2025 limits will be announced in the coming months. Workers who are 50 or older can make catch-up contributions to workplace retirement-savings plans of another $7,500 this year, for a total of $30,500.
The end game is to have a portfolio that’s worth seven to 14 times your salary when you retire, says Roger Young, a certified financial planner with T. Rowe Price. High earners should gun for 14, simply because they will get a smaller portion of their income in retirement from Social Security, so they’ll need more assets in relation to their income.
But this is also the stage when different investing goals appear — college tuition, a second home. When you invest for those goals, think carefully about timing. If you plan to use the money in less than three years, stay out of the stock market and opt for a high-yield savings account, short-term Treasury bills or a money market fund. If the goal is seven to 10 years away or beyond, keep the money in stocks.
Investments earmarked for mid-term goals — those that are three to seven years away — are “the most challenging” part of your portfolio to figure out how to invest, says Walsh. Consider a mix of short- and intermediate-term bond funds. Our favorite intermediate-term bond funds include Fidelity Total Bond ETF (FBND, $46, 0.36%), Baird Aggregate Bond (BAGSX, 0.55%) and Dodge & Cox Income (DODIX, 0.41%). We also like Vanguard Intermediate-Term Bond ETF (BIV, $78, 0.05%) and Fidelity Investment Grade Bond (FBNDX, 0.45%). For shorter-term allocations, we favor BlackRock Short Duration Bond (NEAR, $51, 0.25%), BlackRock Ultra Short-Term Bond (ICSH, $51, 0.08%) and Vanguard Short-Term Investment Grade (VFSTX, 0.20%).
“Get some dividend-paying stocks in there, too,” says U.S. Bank’s Arnold. Stocks of companies that pay dividends tend to be less volatile than the broad stock market. ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF (NOBL, $105, 0.35%) tracks an index of companies in the broad benchmark that have raised their payouts annually for at least 25 years. In 2022, when the S&P 500 lost roughly 18%, the ProShares ETF declined just 6.5%. Kip ETF 20 member Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF (SCHD, $85, 0.06%) held up even better, falling just 3.2%.
Pre-retirement
You’re in the home stretch. If retirement is five to seven years away, you’re probably checking your portfolio a little more frequently.
Planning strategies. Assess your “retirement readiness” if you haven’t already, says Young. Review and calculate your spending needs in retirement. Incorporate Social Security benefits as well as any pension you may have in this plan. If you haven’t already, go to the Social Security website to get an estimate of your benefits (www.ssa.gov/prepare/get-benefits-estimate). You can file as early as age 62 to receive benefits, but your payments will be reduced because those born in 1960 or later aren’t typically entitled to 100% of their benefits until age 67. Note that for every year you put off claiming benefits past your full retirement age until age 70, your benefit increases by 8%.
Consider working with an adviser. Hiring one doesn’t have to mean you hand over all your money. Some will work by the hour, meeting once a year to make sure you’re on track. He or she can help you develop a plan to get to and through retirement, from helping you figure out what your expenses will be, to setting up a plan for managing short- and medium-term expenses, to deciding when to take Social Security — among other issues. “These decisions have big consequences,” says Walsh, so you’ll want to work through them carefully. To find a certified financial planner, check out the CFP Board website (www.letsmakeaplan.org), which allows you to search by city and state. Or try the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (www.napfa.org) and search by zip code.
Your biggest question is probably whether you have enough saved. The answer depends on how much you’ve saved so far, what kind of lifestyle that sum will provide for the rest of your life — and whether that’s enough for you. “One million is not nearly enough for some,” says Baird’s Steffen. For others, especially those with a pension, it’s more than enough. As a benchmark, the folks at T. Rowe Price say a 60-year-old should have a portfolio equal to six to 11 times your salary; a 65-year-old, seven to 14 times.
Investing strategies. In your sixties, as you did in your fifties, keep progressively lowering the risk in your portfolio. “Statistically,” says Figueroa, “this is the most dangerous time to take on portfolio risk.”
Young, at T. Rowe Price, suggests savers in their sixties consider a 45% to 65% allocation to stocks, with 35% to 55% in bonds and cash. Divide the bond portfolio, in rough proportions, into 45% U.S. investment-grade debt, 20% U.S. government bonds, and the remaining 35% in bond sectors such as high yield, international debt and emerging-markets IOUs. Keep it simple by investing in bond mutual funds or ETFs. In addition to the previously mentioned Baird Aggregate Bond and Dodge & Cox Income, we like Vanguard Core Bond (VCORX, 0.25%) and Fidelity Strategic Income (FADMX, 0.68%). Our favorite high-yield bond funds include Vanguard High-Yield Corporate (VWEHX, 0.23%) and Manning & Napier High Yield Bond S (MNHYX, 0.91%). In small doses, add in funds such as Vanguard Emerging Markets Bond (VEMBX, 0.55%) and T. Rowe Price Floating Rate (PRFRX, 0.78%).
This is a good time to examine your stock portfolio. You still want to stay diversified, but it may behoove you to dial down risk. Pare your exposure to midsize- and small-company stocks, for instance. Consider adding a dividend stock fund, such as the aforementioned ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF or Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity. Focus on high-quality, well-established companies, which tend to be less volatile and more resilient in economically uncertain times. You’ll find plenty of such stocks in JPMorgan US Quality Factor (JQUA, $56 0.12%). A market decline that dents your portfolio around the time you retire can permanently reduce the income you’ll have available, a phenomenon known as sequence-of-returns risk. Making withdrawals during a bear market locks in losses that you have little time to make up, dampening returns for the life of a portfolio.
Not surprisingly, Wall Street has stepped up with a slew of new ETFs that offer downside protection from stock market declines in exchange for forgoing some of the upside. So-called buffered or defined-outcome ETFs invest in options linked to a broad benchmark that define the parameters for how much protection you get and what you might give up. For example, Innovator U.S. Equity Power Buffer ETF-July (PJUL, $40, 0.79%) limits losses to 15% in the S&P 500 for those who purchased the ETF’s shares in early August — in exchange for a 12-month cap of 13.7% on returns.
You can also defray that risk with a bigger emergency fund, especially if you’re two to three years away from retirement. An 18-month to two-year hoard of cash will offer peace of mind if a bear market hits just before you retire. “If you’re spending anything in less than five years, don’t put it anywhere near the stock market,” says Prescott, Ariz., CFP David Edmisten.
Before you retire, backstop another three to five years’ worth of expenses with short- and immediate-term bond funds. Those include some of the funds recommended above, including the BlackRock Short Duration and Ultra-Short ETFs and Vanguard’s Short-Term Investment Grade fund. For the intermediate-term funds, consider Fidelity Total Bond, Baird Aggregate and Dodge & Cox Income, as well as Vanguard Intermediate-Term and Fidelity Investment Grade.
Post-retirement
Three to five years after retirement is still a sensitive time for your investments. You’re getting a “paycheck” in the form of distributions from your cash account, and now is the time to make changes to your portfolio to make your money last.
Spending strategies. “I haven’t met anyone who spent in retirement what they thought they would spend. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less,” says Edmisten. Part of the problem is that spending varies from the beginning of retirement to the end. Expenses over the first 10 years tend to be high, then wane over the following 10 years. But in the final stretch, expenses tend to rise. Housing (which might be a nursing home or assisted-living center) and health care tend to be the biggest outlays.
Once retired, maintain two to three years of spending money in a high-yield cash account — that includes money you’d spend to enjoy life as well as to cover basic month-to-month expenditures. And “set up a monthly distribution from the account, just like a paycheck,” to your checking account, says Edmisten.
Investing strategies. The three- to five-year stretch after retirement can be tricky, because that is when retirees have the most amount of money in their portfolio. If it’s invested incorrectly, says Walsh, that can have a very big negative consequence on their lifestyle. That’s why, in addition to your emergency cash fund, it’s important to maintain that three- to five-year bucket of expenses in a short-term bond portfolio you set up in your sixties.
But retirement can last a few decades, so don’t get too conservative. “We see people get to retirement and assume they have to dial the stock portion way back,” says Baird’s Steffen. “Be careful not to pull back too far. You don’t need every dollar of the money that you’ve saved for retirement on day one.” Indeed, you should slowly increase portfolio risk in the years after you retire to guard against longevity risk — the risk that you outlive your money.
In your seventies and older, consider holding at least 30% to 50% of your assets in stocks and the rest in bonds and cash. “It’s not uncommon for retirees to hold 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds and cash,” Steffen adds. Whether you tilt toward more or fewer stocks will depend on your risk tolerance and how much you’ve saved. “If you under-saved, you need to earn a higher return. That means taking on more risk. But if you’ve saved a ton of money, you don’t need to take on risk,” says Walsh.
Stay diversified. Some retirees make the mistake of focusing too much on generating income. “If you’d focused on the highest-yielding dividend sectors over the past 15 years, you’d have missed out on the biggest rally in large-company growth stocks, which tend to pay little to no dividends,” says Winter, the Salt Lake City CFP.
Increasingly, there are options for retirees who want help figuring out how to turn their nest egg into a source of income. Your 401(k) plan may offer a target-date fund with an annuity component that offers regular, paycheck-like payments. BlackRock’s LifePath Paycheck and Nuveen’s Lifecycle Income series are two examples. T. Rowe Price has a version, too. And some fund firms are offering products designed to provide a consistent amount of cash per month. T. Rowe Price Retirement Income 2020 (TRLAX, 0.53%) and T. Rowe Price Retirement Income 2025 (TRAVX, 0.54%) are two; they aim to generate an annual income of about 5% of the fund’s average net asset value over the past five years. Schwab’s Monthly Income funds — Schwab Monthly Income Payout (SWLRX, 0.21%), Schwab Monthly Income Target Payout (SWJRX, 0.25%) and Schwab Monthly Income Flexible Payout (SWKRX, 0.25%) — all provide a monthly income stream with varying parameters and payouts.
Disaster planning: A cash cushion is a must at every age
You know the drill: Responsible adults of any age should have at least three to six months of expenses on hand in cash. That’s true even if interest rates start to come down as the Federal Reserve starts easing. In late August, the biggest money fund, Fidelity Government Money Market (SPAXX, expense ratio 0.42%), yielded 4.96%; Schwab Value Advantage Money Fund (SWVXX, 0.34%) yielded 5.11%. High-yield savings accounts yielded north of 4%.
But let’s be honest. Most people, whether they’re 20 or 45, find it hard to shore up a fund for emergencies. Start small by setting a goal to save up one month of expenses, then focus on slowly and systematically adding to the account over time to work up to several months’ worth.
Many families rely on a home equity line of credit as their rainy-day fund. “That’s not ideal,” says T. Rowe Price’s Roger Young, in part because you’ll pay interest to borrow that money, and rates are still high. But as a last resort, “it is something you can draw on in an emergency and not max out on your credit card.”
How much is enough? Your emergency fund “should be big enough to provide enough of a cushion so that if you lose your job, you won’t have to make many adjustments to your spending” before you find another, says SoFi’s Brian Walsh.
One month of expenses might be a good base for young people starting out. If you’re single (or married), don’t own a home, have little debt and are (both) employed, aim for at least three months. Contract workers or people with uneven income streams should lean toward a stash of six months or more, says Young. A family with only one income earner, or a highly paid professional whose job might be hard to replace quickly, might set aside enough for nine months to a year.
You’ll need an even bigger cash pile the closer you get to quitting, because in retirement, your emergency fund will morph into the account that you draw on for spending money. Two to three years ahead of your retirement, set aside at least 18 months of expenses in cash, and safeguard the next three to five years with a “bucket” of short- and intermediate-term bond funds. With a healthy emergency fund, says CFP David Edmisten, “the world can throw anything at you, and it’s going to be okay.”
Note: This item first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.