An allocation such as yours would not be called an AGGRESSIVE Portfolio, regardless of your age. If, as you say, this is your complete savings (save perhaps your house), it might actually be called too conservative. An "old" rule of thumb had a 60% stock / 40% bond allocation for retirees, others had percentages based upon your age... eg if you were 70, maybe only 30% stocks, 80 - 20% STOCKS.. But that was when you could get a decent amount of interest on fixed income investments (bond like) and also do something called Laddered CDs, whereby you could also get a decent amount of interest by purchasing bank certificates of deposit with varying maturities.

Are you currently protected on the downside ? Yes.. Let's say this account is today worth $ 100,000. (The numbers are the same with $1 million or 10million). That means you have $27,500 invested in stocks. If the stock market totally crashed and went down 50%, your account value would "only" be down $ 13,750, since the bulk of it isnt affected by stock market turbulence. If anything, however, you can be a victim of inflation, as neither your bonds nor your cash . stable value yield much more than zero. If we do have a surge in inflation, your bond portfolio would most likely go down as well, as interest rates would rise, causing bond prices to fall. You might want to consider a "fee only" financial planner.. someone that IS NOT a stock broker that can assess your financial situation.. eg current course and speed, will you outlive your portfolio (bad) or will your portfolio outlive you (better). They will be able to put your spending and savings into perspective so that you will be able to Sleep well at night (SWAN) knowing that your financial affairs are in good order.

Stock Market Crash
 

The best advice that can be given to you is 1) talk to friends and see who they use or 2) utilize the services of a Mutual Fund Company like Fidelity or Vanguard. Both have online information to learn about the stock market and also they have advisors that you can talk with. There happens to be a Fidelity office in Lake Sumter. Your money is too precious to take advice from non professionals.

Becca: in my opinion that is an excellent allocation of your allocation. Rule of thumb is your age should determine percentage. For example if you are 65 years old then 65% of your holdings should be in what would be considered safe investments, i.e. bonds, money market, etc.. The other 35% could be placed in stocks so you could some short term growth potential.

Becca,
I would study the best practices of large 401k (403b) and mimic those plans.

The largest in the world and best 401k plan has all of its allocation plans for all age targeted plans on line by asset class.

You can view it on Home | Thrift Savings Plan. The thrift savings plan was started in 1984 when Federal employees were shifted from a solid pension plan to a weak one with a 401k. It is free of all political influence. The other element of success for TSP is low operating cost. Vanguard investments comes the closest to this commercially

Get advice
 

You DO need someone who is knowledgeable about investments. I recommend Senior Financial, a small firm who takes an interest in helping you stay afloat for the rest of your life. I was in the same boat, I knew little about stocks and the stock market. My husband handled all that but now he was gone and I was clueless. They really helped. Jean Darrell owns the firm but my advisor is Josh Cruz, the phone number is 866-829-3337
Good luck!

Actually many dividend stocks can lose a lot of value and cut their dividends so I would be extremely careful and even if you only have 20% in stocks make sure it's spread it around to at least 10 different stocks or wanted to good mutual funds or spiders

More ideas
 

As many people have said you probably have a pretty good allocation depending on your age quantity of money and if you have other retirement benefits. I would say if you're living in The villages and you have SS and the money in the bank you're doing okay. There are many other risks as you approach older age as I say including debilitating diseases and long-term healthcare in a home. Both you can buy insurance for but it will be very expensive today probably at your senior age. The other thing you don't talk about is if you have good children. And I mean good. Sons and daughters that will come visit you or take you in if you get dementia or reach your late 90s and need day by day help. These are things I don't worry about as I know I have three great children as well as a wife. There are many people that marry somebody 10 or 20 years younger for this reason. If you have a lot of capital I wouldn't necessarily do this but it's just another thought.

Age is really a bad way to set your allocation. I realize this prior "method" was simply a surrogate for Health and risk tolerance but it is a poor investment strategy. There are sickly 50 year olds and healthy 80 year olds. There are rich 50 year olds and poor 80 year olds and the opposite.

If you can weather a market correction and you can live without your retirement funds age adjusting your asset into bonds, which have not performed much at all in recent years, means you're just leaving money on the table and probably actually losing money due to inflation.

The same goes for money market/cash. If you need the liquid assets, fair enough, keep in there what you need but if you don't, put it somewhere it's going to earn. There are fairly conservative mutual funds that consistently return 4-6% even in flat and bear markets.

It's a risk/reward calculation and basing it on age without factoring in a lot of other details of your life and needs doesn't do anyone any good.

There is no question you should go more conservative with age, this issue is how much and 35% in growth for a healthy 65YO is bad, as is 50% in stocks for a sickly 50YO.

I agree and we refer to this book from time to time. Have read several of his books. Very easy to read and understand. Ric does a good job explaining things.

I found this book helpful: "The 5 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them. Getting Investing Right." by Peter Mallouk, JD.MBA. Publisher is Wiley Publications

Hi DAVES! I ran my holdings thru the Morningstar fund x-ray. NOTE: nearly 26% of my total investments are in Lincoln's Stable Value Account, no ticker symbol(it's an annuity :shocked:), and I don't know how the Morningstar assessment was affected by not including 1/4 of my holdings.

Asset Allocation: Your portfolio is moderately risky.
Diversification: Your overall portfolio style: Core. For most investors, maintaining such broad-based market exposure is a prudent way to invest.
Fees & Expenses: The mutual funds in your portfolio tend to have very low expense ratios.
World Regions: You have a fairly healthy stake in foreign stocks.

Thanks for the suggestion to take that look!

To All, again a big thanks for the opinions and gentle prods. I have more knowledge today than I did 2 days ago (reading until my eyes crossed) but still have a looooonnng way to go. Thanks again, very appreciated!

I heard a rule of thumb is to keep your age as a percentage in conservative sectors

Investments
 

According to my CFP advisor, the rule of thumb for investments is to consider your age which takes into account the possibility of a crash. Based on 100, if you are 70 then 70% of your $ should be in as safe a place as possible (money markets, bank, etc). The other 30% can be in stocks, bonds and other more volatile choices. A correction will typically happen often, although a true crash takes years to recover which is why the rule of thumb seems to work.

If 26 percent of your 403B account is in an annuity, that is even more reason to transfer the money to an personal IRA with Vanguard or Fidelity. You should be able to cash out the 403B, get rid of the annuity, and take control of your own money. But, make sure Vanguard or Fidelity does a direct transfer with no income tax consequences.

Retiredguy123, that was exactly the response I knew I'd get from you and a few others, hence the shocked eyes when confessing to the holding! I absolutely will follow your advice. I've been reading about annuities and everything you and the others wrote was backed up. Now I'm going to stop beating myself for my ignorance, I also read that many did just what I did, make regular contributions and let someone else manage the investments. But now it's more important to me that I know where my money is. Somewhere along the way I got old enough to retire, I didn't think it would happen so fast. I appreciate all your advice and the time you took to pass it along. Thank you!!