How do you know if your investments are on track? One way to gauge your progress is by age, making the right moves in your 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond. A better benchmark is your life stage.
Also see: Money smarts start young: When should children start investing?
Landmark birthdays can be useful prompts, but they’re not investment instructions. A 30-year-old with a secure job and no dependants may invest very differently from a 30-year-old who spent their 20s studying and is now balancing student debt and family responsibilities.
Duma Mxenge, Head of Business & Market Development at Satrix, explains that life stages are a better guide, with investment goals based on how much you’ll need, when you’ll need it, and how you might handle any setbacks along the way.
Milestones that should trigger a review
Certain events are worth pausing for, whatever stage of life you’re in. Your first full-time salary is usually when ‘adulting’ starts: it’s a good moment to set up an emergency fund, tackle your most expensive debts, join your employer’s retirement plan, and automate your regular contributions.
Your first salary increase is then a chance to increase your savings rate – before your lifestyle costs expand and you discover that more money coming in usually means more money going out.
Relationship milestones like marriage or partnership may merit a similar review of your financial goals, debts, insurance, beneficiaries, and shared or individual savings.
Buying a home creates a near-term deadline, since you won’t want your deposit exposed to a sudden dip in the stock market. A child adds new costs, like education, childcare, protection, and estate planning. Later on, career changes, caring responsibilities, divorce, inheritance, and self-employment may also be reasons to reset your plan.
Early career: Build the habit and buy time
In your 20s and early 30s, your key advantage is a long runway. Retirement is a long way off, and you have time and the power of compounding on your side.
Once you’ve covered emergency cash and short-term plans, regular contributions to a low-cost, broadly diversified fund are a practical starting point. Diversification means spreading your money across companies, sectors, countries and asset classes, rather than betting on one fashionable share or theme.
Keep money you might need in a hurry (a house deposit, next year’s tuition, emergency reserves) in something more liquid, like a money market fund or cash-like holdings.
Long-term retirement money can typically tolerate more market fluctuation than money you’ll need within a few years. That’s not permission to speculate or take needless risks, though. Increasing your investments as your salary grows, and resisting the urge to sell in ordinary downturns, will usually serve you better than chasing the next big winner.
Also see: Beginner-friendly ways to start investing in South Africa
Mid-career: Coordinate competing goals
From your mid-30s through to your early 50s, it helps to separate your retirement, education, housing, and lifestyle goals by deadline. Estimate what each one needs, direct new contributions accordingly, and resist the temptation to raid retirement savings for short-term plans.
Check whether market moves have shifted your portfolio’s risk level, and rebalance if needed by restoring your chosen mix, not by chasing recent winners. Review your retirement contributions, your employer’s matching, your fees, insurance, and beneficiaries. A higher mid-career income can support greater retirement saving, but don’t neglect your cash reserves or let expensive debt linger.
Late career: Reduce deadline risk, not all growth
Retirement ages vary by employer, from the mid-50s to 65 and beyond.
As yours approaches, build a spending plan: list your essential and discretionary costs, guaranteed income, debts, tax considerations, and when each account will be used. Money you’ll need in the first years of retirement should generally carry less market risk than money set aside for decades further out.
Retirement isn’t a reason to move everything into cash, though. Many people need their portfolio to support decades of spending once retired (you might live well into your 90s), so inflation and longevity remain relevant risks. A prudent structure often combines short-term cash, defensive assets for stability, and diversified growth investments for later-life spending.
The right balance depends on your withdrawal needs and your comfort with volatility. Even pension money left invested will rise and fall, so review your withdrawals and investments regularly.
Investing doesn’t end at retirement. It just enters a new phase. The question shifts from “how big can my pot become?” to “how reliably can it support my life?”
Review your spending, withdrawals, risk and beneficiaries at least once a year and after any major change, and don’t mistake one good market year for a permanent income boost. Consider regulated financial advice when pension choices, tax, inheritance or complex withdrawals are involved.
The rule that doesn’t age
Whatever your age or stage: match your risk to each goal’s deadline and importance, diversify, control costs and complexity, and revisit your plan whenever your life changes.
Featured image: iStock/fizkes
Also see: Investing in your child’s future: A guide to education planning
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