As the Covid-19 pandemic lumbers on, people’s anxiety is beginning to shift from acute concerns about immediate wellbeing to broader worries such as the continued ability to reach financial goals. With any luck, we’ve gone through the eye of the storm but that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. In such times, investors want to know how best they can protect their assets and if there’s any hope of snagging fleeting returns.
Speaking to asset protection in the abstract makes no sense. How best to hang on to capital depends on an individual’s objectives. To start, then, ask yourself why you aim create wealth.
Framing Financial Goals
With investments down and income streams drying out, now more than ever you need a clear understanding of your financial goals. Are you saving for a comfortable retirement, trying to improve your present quality of life, or aiming to pay for a loved one’s schooling? Your answer will determine the timeframe dictating your decisions. It will also help you decide which of your secondary financial goals remain relevant. As future outlooks change, so too should your prior-set aspirations.
Rebalance Your Portfolio
Recalibrating your financial goals doesn’t mean much unless you rebalance your investment portfolio to reflect the change in your priorities. How you go about doing so will depend on your age, risk tolerance, and return expectations.
It’s not only your priorities that have shifted, however. The changing economic landscape means that allocations which may have looked balanced three months ago no longer do. If a 50/50 split between stocks and bond sat well with you prior to the pandemic, you’ll want to reassess. With the latter down and the former up, a 60/40 allocation may now better suit your objectives.
Avoid Hasty Decision-Making
Amidst the uncertainty of the present, you’d be wise to chat with an advisor before tweaking your portfolio. After all, rarely does reactive change-making pay off. What’s more, in times of trouble it is easy to forget that your portfolio was built upon a predetermined level of risk tolerance. This means you deemed losses within a certain range acceptable. Unless your numbers are far outside what you’d imagined, it may be best to simply stay the course.
Measure Twice, Cut Once
Whatever you do, act from an informed position. Check out our free library of educational wealth-management videos to start. Put one on the next time you’re doing the dishes—because if there’s one thing we’ve all learned about pandemics, it’s that the dishes never end—and if you’d like more, give us a call. We’d be happy to chat and share ideas!
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