Growth Period (Age 20 - 35)

• You are attempting to accumulate assets in order to achieve immediate needs or long term goals
• Your acceptance of risk is fairly high because you realize that you have a long investment horizon in which you can accumulate more assets.
• You should be learning solid investment advice to help increase your knowledge of investing.

Consolidation Period (Age 35 – 55)

• You are now well into your career and are paying off the majority of your long-term debt such as your mortgage and other associated debts.
• Your earning should exceed you debt and you should be investing this for future retirement in medium-risk investments for your retirement
• You no longer are willing to accept a high level of risk you earning capacity is decreasing as you get older.
• Your goal should be to retire wealthy.

Retirement and Spending Period (Age 55 - 75+)

• You have usually accumulated all your life-time earnings and you are at the peak to your net worth
• Your assets and income should more than cover any expenses and you should be able to satisfy any future goals
• You are no longer willing to invest in medium to high risk investments because you have enough equity capital to sustain your expenses
• You now have the ability to spend your lifetime earnings and enjoy the remaining time of your life.
• Don’t stop investing .

It is important to remember that this is just an established and widely accepted guideline but is by no means definitive or perfect. You may differ from this structure because of a hugely differing number of reasons that are specific to you and these should be discussed with your financial planner or adviser. The purpose of including them in this educational section is not to get you overly worried about their importance but to ensure you are conscious of the underlying purpose of these periods and the reasoning behind why they exist.