From
Your Perspective:
Managing your 401(k) portfolio
Managing your 401(k)
portfolio
As your life changes — in terms of career,
family, or lifestyle — you can expect your investing goals
to change, as well. For example, you may find yourself willing
to take more investment
risk,
and adjust your portfolio to emphasize long-term growth investments,
or just the opposite, as time goes by.
But even if your investing goals and risk tolerance
remain fixed throughout your life, the market won’t. No
retirement portfolio can weather more than a few years of market
fluctuations without being affected. For example, returns above
or below your expectations for different
asset
classes
can throw your
asset
allocation
out of balance, which means you’ll have to
rebalance and reallocate your retirement account to stay on the
track you’ve set for yourself.
Fortunately,
401(k)
plans make it easy for you to manage your portfolio by redirecting
the way your new contributions are allocated among your investment
choices or by moving assets from one investment to another.
If
you have online access to your portfolio or you have
a 401(k) plan brokerage account, you may be able to
shift your
asset allocation
and the individual investments as often
as you wish. Just be wary of the consequences of reallocating
your portfolio too often.
