Money Management

You should rebalance your investment portfolio in 2024 — and every year. Here’s why it’s important to match investments to your risk level. 

You probably have a lot of tasks on your to-do list as a new year rolls around. But there’s one personal finance move that you absolutely need to make. It’s often overlooked, but if you don’t take care of it, you could really come to regret it.

Rebalancing your portfolio is crucial for investors

Rebalancing your portfolio is the one investment move everyone needs to make going into 2024. Rebalancing involves readjusting the holdings in your brokerage account to meet your current level of risk tolerance.

There are two reasons to do this:

Your risk tolerance changes over time. The closer you are to needing your money, the less risk you can afford to take on since you don’t have as much time to recover from potential losses.Your asset allocation changes over time as some investments overperform and some underperform. Your investments don’t grow at a uniform rate, so your portfolio can become misaligned with your investment goals if you don’t rebalance.

Unfortunately, many people skip out on rebalancing because they don’t realize they need to do it or aren’t sure how. That explains why 37% of baby boomers are more exposed to stocks than they should be, putting them at risk of facing really big losses they don’t have time to recover from — which could derail their retirement.

Why is rebalancing so important?

To understand why rebalancing is so important, let’s take a look at a simple example. Say you are 50. You’re getting reasonably close to retirement, but aren’t there yet, so you should still have a good portion of your money invested in the stock market. Experts recommend subtracting your age from 110 to find out how much. So about 60% of your money should be in the stock market, while most of the rest should be in bonds and perhaps a little bit in cash.

Now, let’s say for simplicity’s sake that you had $100,000 invested 10 years ago when you were 40 and you wanted 70% of your portfolio in stocks. At the time, here’s what your asset allocation would have looked like:

70% stocks ($70,000)30% bonds ($30,000)

Now, say you did pretty well with your stocks, but your bonds didn’t perform quite as well. Here’s what this could look like:

If you earned a 12% average annual return on stocks, you’d have $217,409.37 invested in them (assuming you didn’t add any extra money).If you earned a 6% average annual return on your bonds, you’d have $53,725.43 in bonds.

If you didn’t make any changes or add anything to your portfolio, your asset allocation would have drifted over time, so you’d have 79% of your money invested in the stock market right now when you should have just 60%.

And, even if you kept adding to your portfolio, unless you put much more of your additional contributions into bonds each year rather than stocks, you could be even more out of whack if your stock investments outperformed your bond investments by so much.

Ultimately, since your risk tolerance changes over time and some investments always end up performing better than others, it is essential you rebalance every year to get your stocks in alignment with your goals.

So, figure out what percentage of your money should be in the market based on risk tolerance (subtracting your age from 110 is a good start), then take a look at your current holdings and decide what assets you need to buy more of in order to make sure you have the right level of risk. Do this every year so you aren’t at risk of losing too much or earning returns that are too low.

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The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Want to achieve your financial goals in 2024? Here’s how to get creative about saving money — and make it sociable, creative, and fun. 

After the past few years of high inflation and revenge spending, you might want to save more money in 2024. But too often, saving money gets depicted as a lonely, solitary activity. Like if you want to save money, you have to deny yourself all joy. You have to stay home alone on Saturday nights, while your friends are out there where the action is. You’re sitting on the couch in the dark, eating beans out of a can, while your friends are laughing together, eating delicious food at a jam-packed restaurant with great live music.

Saving money shouldn’t be painful and isolating! What if saving money could be easy, creative, sociable, and even fun? Let’s look at a few creative ways to improve your personal finances.

1. Save money on takeout by hosting Friend Dinner Parties

Even if you want to save money, you still need to eat! Instead of spending big money on restaurant meals and takeout, have your friends over for dinner. Get a group of frugal friends together to cook and do meal prep. Wouldn’t it be fun to have some other people to help you do menu planning? You can make a big trip together to Costco or Sam’s Club to stock up on ingredients.

Cooking meals should be a social occasion. Having friends and family over for dinner — and cooking together, and splitting the costs — is a great chance to reconnect with your loved ones while saving money on restaurant meals.

2. Use the 52-week exponential savings challenge

Setting a savings goal can often feel overwhelming. Where to begin? How much can you really afford to save out of your monthly budget or out of each paycheck? What if you fall short of your goal and feel like a failure? Might as well not even start! Let’s go to the mall and go shopping!

Fortunately, there’s an easy, creative way to start saving in 2024. It’s called the 52-Week Savings Challenge. Here’s how it works:

The first week, save $1. In week 2, save $2. Week 3: $3. And so on! By the 52nd week of the year, you’re still “only” having to save $52 that week. And by the end of the 52-week challenge, you’ll have saved $1,378.

This is a creative way to save, and it feels painless. You won’t even notice the money going out of your bank account. If the idea of saving $100 per month feels impossible, you can start small with just $1 a week — and you’ll end up with more money saved than you would have gotten by saving $100 per month.

3. Make savings automatic with automated transfers

Many people struggle to save, because they don’t know when it’s “safe” to move money from checking to savings. “I can’t save that money; I might need it to pay a bill or avoid an overdraft fee,” they think to themselves. As a result, they never start saving. And when they do see extra money in their checking account, they spend it.

It’s time to outsmart yourself in 2024 and start saving automatically. There are savings apps and special tools now offered by many banks that can help you set up automated transfers to savings for specific savings goals.

4. Lock in your new savings immediately

Every time you cut back on subscriptions, cancel a gym membership, or renegotiate a bill for a lower monthly price, you need to be vigilant about making sure that the extra cash actually gets saved. For every monthly bill you lower, or every subscription you cancel, even if it’s just canceling a streaming service for $15 a month, you should set up an automatic monthly transfer to move that extra cash into a high-yield savings account.

This way, the money isn’t in your checking account and you’re not tempted to spend it — it feels empowering to watch your savings grow faster! I tried this method myself a few years ago when I was trying to pay off a home equity loan faster; I canceled a gym membership that I wasn’t using, and I changed a music streaming subscription from paid to free.

These two simple decisions freed up an extra $110 of cash each month. And I set up recurring transfers to move the cash, on those specific dates, toward paying off my debt. Finding that extra $110 of recurring monthly savings felt psychologically significant. It helped me build momentum to save even more money and pay off debt faster.

5. Get an accountability partner for savings

People often struggle to talk about savings goals. It’s easy to turn spending money into a flashy, competitive social activity, but if you’re trying to save, you might feel like you’re on your own. It doesn’t have to be this way. If you want to save more money in 2024, get the support of other people who are also working toward a similar goal.

Whether it’s a real life friend who you meet with once a month for coffee, or an app like Stickk that lets you share your progress with online accountability partners, getting a supportive “buddy” can help you reach your savings goals faster.

Bottom line: Want to reach your financial goals and New Year’s resolutions in 2024? It’s time to get creative about saving money. You don’t have to suffer or be isolated to reach your savings goals. Saving money can be sociable, painless, empowering, and even fun.

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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Costco Wholesale. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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