RETIREMENT PLANNING
The autumn air is crisp, and the sun is bright–football season is well underway. As you cheer on your favorite team this year, you may notice similarities between your team’s game plan and your own investment plan.
Investing is a long-term game plan
Like football, investing requires a long-term strategy and the perseverance to pursue your plan from kick-off to conclusion.
Early in the game, you may decide to take a relatively aggressive approach because you’ll still have a lot of time on the clock to recover from any fumbles or other mistakes.
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(See Putting time on your side.) While your goal may be to score a touchdown with every investment, there may be times you decide to punt if a particular investment is no longer aligned with your goals and objectives.
Along the way, you may expect a range of different outcomes. Some plays may yield small gains, others bigger gains; sometimes you’ll be stopped for no gain at all, and other times you may be thrown for a loss. It’s all part of the game—in investing as in football.
As the game progresses, if you’re well on your way to success, you may choose to become more conservative to potentially protect your assets. But if you’ve fallen behind, you may opt to remain aggressive to try to reach your investment goals by the time you retire. (See Retirement savings: get back on track.)
A defensive investment strategy
Solid defense is an important part of investing—just as it is in football. You can try to avoid steep investment losses by diversifying your portfolio through mutual funds or a broad range of stocks, bonds or other types of investments. While diversification won’t necessarily help you avoid losses altogether, it may help you reduce volatility and short-term losses during uncertain times. (See The risk of avoiding risk.)
The obvious difference between football and investing is that one is a game and the other is real life. The good news is you can be both an armchair quarterback and a serious investor forging ahead toward your retirement goals by applying similar strategies to both the game and your investment plan.
Thrivent Mutual Funds offers a wide range of actively managed funds to help investors work toward their long-term investment goals. Learn more.
The concepts presented are intended for educational purposes only. This information should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, strategy, or product.
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