How to Find Your Perfect Asset Allocation

Stepping stone at Gargarve, Nr. Skipton. Uk.

How to Find Your Perfect Asset Allocation

Matt Krantz 

The savvy online investor manages her investment portfolio by allocating assets.

Asset allocation and diversification help you spread your risk across various types

of online investments. You can calculate how much risk you can tolerate

and select a blend of investments to give you the highest return for that risk. 

Or, you can take a return-based approach that measures how much return you need

to meet your goal and design a portfolio that can get you there.

Picking an asset allocation based on your risk tolerance

If you’re like most investors, the disappointment you feel when your portfolio falls

more than you’d like is definitely greater than any happiness you might feel at eking out

a slightly better-than-expected return. That’s why online tools that assess your appetite for risk, and then design a portfolio, make sense for many investors.

IFA.com: Take the Index Fund Advisors offer a Risk Capacity Survey to determine 

what kind of investor you are. 

After you answer the questions, the Web site suggests one of several portfolios.

Vanguard’s Investor Questionnaire: The Vanguard questionnaire asks you ten questions 

in an attempt to determine how much risk you can stomach. At the end, the site recommends that you own certain mixes of short-term reserves, stocks, and cash.

CNNMoney: CNNMoney steps you through four questions designed to figure out

what kind of risk taker you are. It then generates a fairly basic asset allocation mix.

Asset-Analysis: This site steps you through five questions that measure your appetite for risk. When you’re done, the site determines how much risk you can take and tells you how much

of your portfolio should be invested in cash, bonds, emerging markets, domestic stocks,

real estate, and international stocks.

Picking an asset allocation based on your goals

The other way to figure out how to allocate your portfolio is to first determine what kind of rate of return you need to reach your goal and then pick an asset allocation designed to get you there.

*TIAA CREF’s Asset Allocation Evaluator: If you want to determine your allocation

on a specific goal, such as saving for college, this is a good tool for you. 

The first question it asks is what you’re saving for, such as retirement, education, or a first home.

The site then asks you additional questions that are relevant to that specific goal.

*Fidelity.com’s Portfolio Review: Use this tool to help you plan for a wide array of goals,

ranging from retirement and education to more specific things like a vacation, wedding,

or wealth accumulation. The Portfolio Review also studies how much risk you can stomach.

The site can analyze your current portfolio and make suggestions on ways to improve

and suggest an asset allocation. You don’t have to be a Fidelity account holder to use the system; you can sign up for a free membership instead.

*Morningstar’s Asset Allocator: The Asset Allocator examines your financial goals

and helps you choose the blend of cash, stocks, and bonds that will make it happen.

The tool isn’t free, though, so you’ll have to pony up for a subscription to Morningstar Premium, which costs $189 a year. A free 14-day trial is available.

*American Century Investment Planner: This planner starts by asking you what you’re saving for and then goes further to make suggestions. You need to register to use the site;

however, you don’t need to have an account.

Some brokers and mutual fund companies provide asset allocation tools to their customers. Mutual fund company T. Rowe Price, for instance, offers tools that analyze your portfolio

and generate asset allocations to customers

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-find-your-perfect-asset-allocation.html

You can TCR software and engineering manuals for spontaneous recall – or pass that exam.

I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

Introduction to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube  

How to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?

www.facebook.com/mreenhunt

www.pinterest.com/mreenhunt

Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

www.turbochargedreading.blogspot.com   

All aspects of regular, each-word down-each-line reading and education. 

Turbo Charged Reading uses these skills significantly faster.

www.innermindworking.blogspot.com     many ways for you to work with the stresses of life

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com     just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”

How To Experience Flow and Get Crazy Productive

Yellow flag loves marshy ground.

How To Experience Flow and Get Crazy Productive

Dr. Travis Bradberry

The average person has 70,000 thoughts each day, and if you don’t learn to organize them,

they have the potential to wreak havoc on your productivity.

When you succumb to the flurry of thoughts running through your head,

your mind becomes disorganized, and the more you ruminate on intrusive thoughts,

the more power you give them.

Most of our thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts.

When you find yourself believing the negative, distracting, and pessimistic things

your inner voice says, it’s very hard to slow down the momentum of your thoughts.

In a recent study conducted at the National Institute on Aging, it was found that allowing 

your mind to be disorganized doesn’t just feel bad, it’s also actually bad for you.

A disorganized mind leads to high stress, chronic negativity, and impulsivity.

These states stifle productivity and contribute to a slew of health problems, 

including weight gain, heart disease, sleep problems, and migraine headaches.

Edward Hallowell, a therapist who helps people deal with disorganized minds,

describes what happens when someone falls victim to his myriad of invasive thoughts:

“He makes impulsive judgments, angrily rushing to bring closure. He is robbed of his flexibility,

his sense of humor, and his ability to deal with the unknown. He forgets the big picture

and the goals and values he stands for. He loses his creativity and his ability to change plans.”

An organized mind, on the other hand, falls into a state of flow. Flow is a blissful state of balance, where you are fully immersed in a task, completely free from distracting thoughts.

Flow states enable you to enjoy your work and perform at the peak of your potential.

Research shows people working in a state of flow

are five times more productive than they’d otherwise be.

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, 

the way it is with children.” –Rainer Maria Rilke

Here are five steps that I use to organize and declutter my mind, find flow,

and keep myself on track for a productive day.

Step 1: Find the Right Amount of Challenge in What You Do

When you’re trying to get work done, it’s easy to lose focus and succumb to intrusive thoughts

when the task at hand is too challenging or too easy. We thrive on a healthy challenge—

something that simulates us without being so difficult that it produces anxiety 

or so simple that it induces boredom. When you consciously and carefully choose a task, 

you greatly increase your chance of achieving flow.

Step 2: Take Control of Your Emotions

While it’s impossible to control how things make you feel, you have complete control over

how you react to your emotions. First, you need to be honest with yourself

about what you are feeling and why you are feeling it. From there, it’s much easier to channel

the emotion into producing the behavior that you want. The key is to identify and label

your emotions as you experience them. Associating words with what you are feeling

makes the emotion tangible and less mysterious. This helps you to relax, figure out

what’s behind your emotion, and move forward. If you try to stifle your emotions and tackle

your work without addressing them, they will slowly eat away at you and impair your focus.

Step 3: Sustain Your Focus

We all know that frustrating feeling of sitting down to tackle something important,

only to quickly lose focus when we expected to dive right into the task.

It takes time for your mind to become fully immersed in an activity.

Studies have shown that it takes five to twenty minutes before people start to focus.

If you can force yourself to persist in the activity in spite of any distractions for twenty minutes,

the chances are much higher that you will be able to sustain your focus and find a state of flow.

The best way to do this is to put away or turn off all of your typical distractions (phones, e-mail, social media), then keep an eye on the clock until you’ve done nothing but your task

for a good 20 minutes, even if you aren’t getting much done.

Chances are that things will really start cooking for you once you hit the twenty-minute mark.

Step 4: Take Breaks

Our brains and bodies simply aren’t wired for prolonged periods of work. While it might seem

as though sitting at your desk for eight hours straight is the best way to get all of your work done, this can work against you. Research has shown that the most productive work cycle

tends to be fifty-two minutes of uninterrupted work, followed by seventeen-minute breaks.

While it probably isn’t realistic to structure your schedule this rigidly,

for most people, the battle is won by just remembering to take breaks.

Just be certain to pepper several short breaks throughout your day.

Step 5: Shift Sets

Once you’ve taken a break, you must shift your focus back to your task.

No matter how “in the zone” you were before taking a break, you’ll sometimes find that

you’re back to square one when it comes to focus. To do a proper set shift, 

you have to reorganize your thoughts by following steps one through four above, 

especially if you’re having trouble diving back into the task. You’ll find that getting back into flow quickly after a break is very doable, but it must be done purposefully.

Bringing It All Together

Organizing your mind to experience flow isn’t particularly difficult, but it does require attention

and monitoring. Lean on these five steps any time you need to get more done.

Have you experienced flow? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below

as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-experience-flow-get-crazy-productive-dr-travis-bradberry

You can TCR software and engineering manuals for spontaneous recall – or pass that exam.

I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

Introduction to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube  

How to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?

www.facebook.com/mreenhunt

www.pinterest.com/mreenhunt

Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

www.turbochargedreading.blogspot.com   

All aspects of regular, each-word down-each-line reading and education. 

Turbo Charged Reading uses these skills significantly faster.

www.innermindworking.blogspot.com     many ways for you to work with the stresses of life

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com     just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”