Portfolio benchmarks at 50

Saving money for retirement is huge. You spend hours trying to figure out how much you should spend and hours trying to make sure that it will work. Then there is always where you should put the money. There are hundreds even thousands of options. Let's take a look at what your financial portfolio should look like when 50 years old.

The closer you get to retirement the more conservative you should be in your portfolio. You can't afford to lose a bunch of money on stocks or other investments that might be shaky. You need to make sure that the money is growing, even if slowly.

As you get older your percentage of money in stocks should shrink. The Today Show on NBC had a great segment on what your financial portfolio should look like as you get older. They said to take 100 and subtract your age. The number you come out with should be the percentage of your money that you have in stocks. So if you were 50 years old, 100 - 50 is 50 so you should have 50% of your money in stocks. Of course if you are more conservative you can always reduce that amount for the percentage of stocks that you have but don't do more.

Put the remaining money into bonds or other investments opportunities that are secure and won't hurt you. You might think that it would be better to put the money into stocks that are doing well, but then those stocks could plummet and you would be left with a very small retirement account. Bonds aren't bad, they are just a slower way of making money. But things like bonds and CD's will always give you money, if they are FDIC insured, which most banks are. Remember that the limit is $250,000 so you might want to spread out your money to different banks or check out the different options at your bank so you can keep the money if something happens, if you have more than $250,000.

Also, make sure that you have money in all different kinds of stocks. You don't want to have 90% of your money that you have in stocks in technology with 10% in retail. It doesn't make sense. Even if one sector is doing better than another, don't put most of your money into it. Put a good amount, but you need to have something to fall back on because the stock market is never a for sure thing.

Talk with your financial advisor to find out the best advice for you. No one knows exactly what will happen but advisors do the best they can. They want to help you out and want to make sure that you are getting the most that you can out of your money. Remember to change your portfolio every few years to make sure that it isn't staying too risky as you get closer to your retirement.