Dr Sam Wylie

Let's say you're 45, okay?

You're going to live to be 95.

I'm granting you a long life here.

I'm not sure that's within my power, but you're going to live another 50 years here.

It's a long journey and you're not even halfway through it.

So don't pull back on the risk just because you're 45.

Think about where you should be on the risk spectrum.

Should I be a little bit to the right, taking quite a bit of risk?

Should I be a bit to the left, not taking so much risk?

And what really goes into that is your age.

45 is pretty modest in age.

So let's say you're 20 years from retirement when you're 45.

Then you've got a long way to go.

That means if something goes wrong, there's plenty of time to make up for the thing that went wrong.

So take a bit more risk on the basis that you have a long way to go

in one notch to the right because you've got 20 years to go in employment.

And then think about the stability of your income.

So do you own a risky small business, which is high risk and high return?

It's great to own your own business, but it does mean that you've got enough risk in making money and you want to take a bit less risk in investing your money.

It's more about wealth preservation if you've got a lot of risk in the making of money.