Cheat sheet

Asset allocation by age, one page

Rules of thumb for the equity/bond split, stated honestly: useful starting points, terrible finishing points. Your risk capacity is about your horizon, income stability and stomach, not just your birthday.

Rule / stage	What it says	The honest caveat
100 minus age	Hold your age in bonds, the rest in equities: 30 years old, 70% equities. The Victorian classic.	Built for shorter retirements and higher bond yields. For long modern retirements it often lands too cautious too early; 110 or 120 minus age is the common modern restatement.
20s to 30s (roughly)	Long horizon, decades of contributions ahead: heavy equity weightings (often 80 to 100%) are defensible because time absorbs volatility and crashes are buying years.	Only if you will not sell in the crash. The first bear market is the tuition; size the equity share to the stomach you have, not the one you aspire to.
40s to 50s	The pot is now large relative to contributions; sequence risk appears on the horizon. Glide gradually (70/30 towards 60/40 territory is a common shape).	Gradually means yearly rebalancing decisions, not a panic derisk after a fall, which locks the loss and misses the recovery.
Near and in retirement	The classic 60/40 to 50/50 zone plus one to three years of spending in cash, so bad markets never force selling equities to eat.	Retirement can last 30+ years; going too defensive hands the problem to inflation instead. Some equity engine usually needs to keep running.
The overriding rule	The best allocation is the one you can hold through a 40% equity fall without selling. Backtest your stomach, not just the portfolio.	Every rule above assumes the money is invested and stays invested. An aggressive allocation you abandon in the crash performs worse than a modest one you keep.

Treat the table as a starting grid, then adjust for what a birthday cannot see: job security, mortgage, dependants, pension guarantees, and how you actually behaved last crash.

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Educational information, not financial advice. Figures current as of July 2026 where dated; allowances and rates change, so check the source before acting.