Dr Sam Wylie

Or let's say that you work for the federal government and you have very, let's say that you're a teacher in a public school, then you have very stable employment.

And that means that you can take more risk in the investing of money.

So the small business owner is going to be more to the left on the risk spectrum and the teacher in the public school is going to be more to the right.

So your age, the stability of your employment, your obligations in life.

And I'm thinking here of any kind of special obligations, like if you had children who had special needs or something like that.

And then your level of risk aversion.

I won't go on and on here, but risk.

You know what about your personality, are you someone who can take a fair bit of risk or are you going to sweat it and it's going to keep you up at night that's going to move you to the right or the left so get yourself to the right position.

On the risk spectrum and know the most common thing is that people don't take enough risk and and the most common way that people don't take enough risk is that they just pay down their mortgage.

So they buy a house and their saving is compulsory super plus the paying down of their mortgage.

And then they buy a nicer house.

They move to a nicer suburb and now they've got another big mortgage.

And they spend most of their investment journey.

They get to the point where retirement is coming up over the horizon.

And suddenly they realise, you know, I've spent my whole investment journey over the last 25 years paying down my mortgage.

I never did anything else.

I didn't sort of...

put my money into something that was a bit higher risk, higher return.

I paid down my mortgage and it just moved me further and further to the left on the risk spectrum, not matching where my age and my personality and my obligations and my employment stability actually put me on the risk spectrum.

So I would strongly recommend that.