Take A Fresh Look At Your Finances This Spring…
The experts at Raymond James take a look at practical ways to potentially add some bloom back into your investment portfolio and take stock of your accumulated assets
Just like cleaning your home, you should take some time to spruce up your finances before the weather gets too nice and your schedule takes on a life of its own!
Dust off your financial goals
As with your wardrobe, the first thing you might do is assess what you own and why you own it. What role do your investments play in your portfolio and are they helping you achieve your goals?
Every investment should serve a purpose. You might invest to help your portfolio grow or to save for retirement. Or perhaps to give you a bit of extra income.
Spread your roots
Diversification isn’t just about the number of investments, but rather how each one complements the others. You could expand your holdings across different types of investments that usually perform differently from each other like shares, bonds and cash. Or spread your shareholdings between different sectors, like tech or healthcare.
Weed out underperformers
Many people own shares they bought years ago on a friend’s recommendation, or they liked a product that a company once sold.
If it’s something you’ve found hard to keep track of or lost interest in doing your research and its performance is lagging behind other investments, it could be a good idea to rethink investing in it. It takes a lot of time to follow an individual company, its progress and the different risks it faces.
Harvest your winners
It’s likely you chose your investments based on the amount of risk you were willing to take. When you review your portfolio, make sure you still have the right amount in each area, and if not, rebalance.
You could consider selling a portion of your top performers and top up areas that haven’t done so well, as long as you’re still happy with your choices. It might sound counterproductive but having investments that move in different directions is why you diversify in the first place.
Need an extra pair of hands?
Reviewing your investment portfolio and keeping your money working as hard as it can makes logical sense to just about everyone. But with the demands of our work-lives and personal interests, finding the time to keep things in sync with our current best thinking isn’t always easy.
If you’re not sure about how your portfolio is doing or want someone to help you with a spring clean, we have an experienced team of advisers ready to muck in!
Risk Warning: With investing, your capital is at risk. Opinions constitute our judgement as of this date and are subject to change without warning. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. This article is intended for informational purposes only and no action should be taken or refrained from being taken as a consequence without consulting a suitably qualified and regulated person.
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