How to Build a Diversified Retirement Portfolio: The Complete Beginner’s Guide for 2026

 

The word ‘investing’ evokes opportunity and possibility, yet for most beginners, it simultaneously triggers anxiety about making costly mistakes with money they cannot afford to lose. Building a retirement portfolio seems overwhelming when confronted with thousands of investment options, conflicting advice from financial media, and uncertainty about how much risk to accept. However, successful retirement investing relies less on sophisticated strategies or market timing expertise than on understanding fundamental principles of diversification, maintaining discipline during market volatility, and allowing time to compound your returns. This comprehensive guide breaks down the essential steps for constructing a diversified retirement portfolio that balances growth potential with appropriate risk management for your specific circumstances.

The stakes for getting retirement investing right have never been higher. Traditional pension plans have largely disappeared, shifting retirement security responsibility from employers to individual workers. Social Security faces long-term funding challenges that may reduce future benefits. Meanwhile, Americans are living longer—a 65-year-old today has roughly a 50% chance of living past 85, meaning retirement savings must potentially last 20-30+ years. These realities make building a robust, diversified investment portfolio essential rather than optional for anyone hoping to maintain financial independence throughout retirement.

 

Understanding Diversification: Your Foundation for Risk Management

Diversification represents the closest thing to a ‘free lunch’ in investing—a strategy that reduces risk without necessarily sacrificing returns. The core principle proves elegantly simple: spreading investments across different asset classes, industries, and geographic regions ensures that losses in one area can be offset by gains in others. This approach does not guarantee profits or prevent losses entirely—no investment strategy can—but it significantly reduces the probability that a single bad investment decision or market event will devastate your retirement savings.

Consider two hypothetical investors saving for retirement over 30 years. The first investor places all savings into a single technology stock because it seems like the most exciting growth opportunity. The second investor spreads identical savings across stocks from multiple industries, bonds of varying maturities, and some real estate investments. If the single technology stock performs spectacularly, the concentrated investor wins big. However, if that company fails—as many individual companies do over three decades—the concentrated investor loses everything. The diversified investor, meanwhile, experiences the ups and downs of various holdings but maintains steady progress toward retirement goals regardless of which specific investments outperform or underperform.

 

How Diversification Actually Works in Practice

Diversification functions because different investments respond differently to the same economic conditions. During economic expansions, stocks typically outperform bonds as corporate profits grow. During recessions, high-quality bonds often gain value as investors seek safety while stocks decline. Real estate investments may thrive when inflation increases, while certain bond values deteriorate. International stocks may surge when U.S. markets struggle. This lack of perfect correlation between asset classes creates the protective effect that diversification provides.

Within the stock portion of your portfolio specifically, diversification means owning shares of companies across different industries, company sizes, and geographic locations. Technology stocks and healthcare stocks react differently to regulatory changes. Large established corporations offer stability, while small-cap companies provide greater growth potential with higher volatility. U.S. companies face different economic and political conditions than European or Asian firms. By spreading stock investments across these dimensions, you reduce the risk that a single sector downturn, regulatory change, or geographic crisis destroys your retirement savings.

Similarly, bond diversification involves mixing government bonds, corporate bonds, and municipal bonds with different maturity dates and credit qualities. Short-term bonds fluctuate less in value but offer lower yields. Long-term bonds provide higher income but greater interest rate risk. Treasury bonds offer maximum safety, while corporate bonds pay more but carry default risk. A properly diversified bond allocation balances these tradeoffs to provide stable income and portfolio protection without concentrating risk in any single area.

 

Step 1: Establish Your Investment Timeframe

Time represents the single most important factor determining appropriate portfolio construction. An old investment adage states that ‘time in the market is more important than timing the market,’ and decades of data confirm this wisdom. The length of time until you need to access your retirement savings fundamentally shapes how much investment risk you can prudently accept and which asset allocation makes sense for your circumstances.

Investors with 30+ years until retirement can afford to maintain aggressive stock allocations—perhaps 80-90% stocks and 10-20% bonds—because they have decades to recover from inevitable market downturns. Historical data show that while stocks experience significant short-term volatility, they have never produced negative returns over any rolling 20-year period since 1926. This long-term resilience allows young investors to harvest stocks’ superior growth potential while weathering temporary market storms that would devastate someone needing to withdraw funds during a downturn.

Conversely, investors within 5-10 years of retirement face a completely different risk landscape. A 40% market crash that occurs just before planned retirement can delay retirement by years or force dramatic lifestyle reductions. This sequence-of-returns risk—where market timing relative to your withdrawal needs matters enormously—demands greater conservatism in asset allocation as retirement approaches. Shifting toward 60% stocks and 40% bonds in your 50s, then perhaps 40% stocks and 60% bonds in your early 70s, provides growth potential while reducing exposure to catastrophic losses at the worst possible time.

 

Age-Based Asset Allocation Guidelines

While individual circumstances vary, research-backed guidelines provide useful starting points for age-appropriate asset allocation. In your 20s and 30s, consider allocations of 80-90% stocks and 10-20% bonds, emphasising growth over stability since you have decades to recover from downturns. Your 40s and 50s might warrant a more moderate allocation of 70% stocks and 30% bonds, balancing continued growth needs with increasing sequence-of-returns risk.

Early retirement years (60-69) often benefit from roughly 60% stocks, 35% bonds, and 5% cash to maintain growth potential while building a cushion against market volatility. Later retirement years (70-79) might shift to 40% stocks, 50% bonds, and 10% cash, prioritising income generation and capital preservation. Beyond age 80, a conservative allocation of 20% stocks, 50% bonds, and 30% cash provides stability while maintaining some growth to combat inflation during potentially decades of remaining life.

Remember, these represent guidelines, not rigid rules. Your specific allocation should account for factors including other income sources (pensions, Social Security, rental income), risk tolerance, health status affecting life expectancy, and whether you plan to leave assets to heirs. Someone with a generous pension covering basic expenses can afford more aggressive stock exposure than someone depending entirely on portfolio withdrawals.

 

Step 2: Understand the Core Asset Classes

Building a diversified retirement portfolio requires understanding the fundamental asset classes and their distinct roles in your overall investment strategy. Each asset class offers different risk-return characteristics and responds uniquely to economic conditions, making them complementary components of a well-constructed portfolio.

 

Stocks: The Growth Engine of Your Portfolio

Stocks represent ownership stakes in companies and historically provide the highest long-term returns of traditional asset classes. From 1926 through 2023, U.S. stocks returned approximately 10% annually on average—far exceeding bonds, cash, or inflation. This growth potential makes stocks essential for building wealth sufficient to fund 20-30+ year retirements. However, this superior performance comes with significant short-term volatility. Stock markets regularly experience 10-20% declines and occasionally suffer devastating crashes exceeding 50%.

Within stocks, diversification spans multiple dimensions. Large-cap stocks (companies worth $10+ billion) offer stability and established business models. Mid-cap stocks ($2-10 billion) balance growth potential with reasonable stability. Small-cap stocks (under $2 billion) provide maximum growth opportunity with maximum volatility. Geographic diversification adds another layer: U.S. stocks currently represent roughly 60% of global market capitalisation, meaning investors who ignore international stocks miss 40% of global opportunities while concentrating risk in a single country’s economy.

Sector diversification ensures you’re not overly dependent on any single industry’s fortunes. Technology stocks offer growth but face disruption risk. Healthcare stocks benefit from ageing demographics but navigate regulatory uncertainty. Financial stocks are tied to economic cycles and interest rates. Energy stocks respond to commodity prices. Consumer staples provide defensive stability during recessions. A properly diversified stock portfolio spreads holdings across all major sectors rather than concentrating in whichever industries currently seem most attractive.

 

Bonds: The Stabilising Foundation

Bonds represent loans to governments or corporations that pay regular interest and return principal at maturity. They serve multiple crucial functions in retirement portfolios: providing predictable income streams, reducing overall portfolio volatility, and offering relative safety during stock market downturns. While bonds generate lower long-term returns than stocks—averaging roughly 5-6% annually historically—their stability proves invaluable for managing risk and ensuring access to funds during market turbulence.

Bond diversification involves several key dimensions. Government bonds (Treasuries) offer maximum safety but the lowest yields. Corporate bonds pay higher interest but carry default risk that varies with the issuing company’s credit quality. Municipal bonds provide tax advantages for high-income investors. Maturity diversification balances short-term bonds (under 3 years), offering flexibility and lower interest rate risk, against long-term bonds (10+ years), providing higher yields but greater price fluctuation when interest rates change.

A popular bond diversification strategy involves building a bond ladder—purchasing bonds with staggered maturity dates that create regular income streams while managing interest rate risk. For example, you might own bonds maturing in 1, 3, 5, 7, and 10 years. As each bond matures, you reinvest the proceeds in a new 10-year bond, maintaining the ladder structure while continuously adapting to current interest rate environments.

 

Cash and Cash Equivalents: Your Liquidity Reserve

Cash and cash equivalents—including money market funds, high-yield savings accounts, and short-term certificates of deposit—provide essential liquidity and stability. While offering minimal returns barely exceeding inflation, these holdings serve critical purposes in retirement portfolios. First, they fund near-term spending needs without forcing you to sell stocks or bonds at inopportune times. Second, they provide psychological comfort during market volatility, reducing panic-driven decisions that destroy long-term wealth.

Financial planners typically recommend retirees maintain 1-2 years of expenses in cash or cash equivalents. This reserve allows you to cover living expenses during market downturns without selling stocks at depressed prices. Additionally, holding 2-4 years of expenses in short-term bonds or CDs creates a secondary buffer. Since the average stock market recovery from peak to peak historically takes roughly 3.5 years, this combined cash and short-term bond cushion lets you weather typical downturns without disrupting your long-term investment strategy.

 

Step 3: Determine Your Personal Asset Allocation

Asset allocation—how you divide investments among stocks, bonds, and cash—represents the most important decision affecting your portfolio’s long-term performance. Research demonstrates that asset allocation explains roughly 90% of portfolio return variability, while individual investment selection and market timing contribute far less. Getting your allocation right matters immensely; optimising individual holdings within that allocation matters considerably less.

 

Assessing Your True Risk Tolerance

Risk tolerance involves both financial capacity to withstand losses and emotional willingness to endure volatility. Your financial capacity depends on factors like investment timeframe, income stability, emergency fund adequacy, and other assets or income sources. Someone with 30 years until retirement, stable employment, adequate emergency savings, and a pension has a high capacity for risk. Someone retiring next year, depending entirely on portfolio withdrawals, has minimal capacity regardless of their emotional comfort with volatility.

Emotional risk tolerance proves harder to assess honestly until you experience actual market crashes. Many investors believe they can tolerate significant volatility until their portfolio value drop 30% in weeks, at which point panic overwhelms rational planning. Be brutally honest about your likely emotional response to major losses. If seeing your portfolio decline 20% would cause you to sell everything and flee to cash—locking in losses and missing the recovery—you need a more conservative allocation regardless of what financial capacity suggests.

Consider taking formal risk tolerance questionnaires offered by major investment firms like Vanguard, Fidelity, or Schwab. These tools assess both financial circumstances and emotional preferences to suggest appropriate asset allocations. While not perfect, they provide useful frameworks for thinking systematically about risk rather than making arbitrary decisions based on current market sentiment.

 

Common Asset Allocation Models

Investment professionals have developed several standard allocation models representing different risk-return profiles. An aggressive allocation might hold 80% stocks and 20% bonds, prioritising maximum growth with acceptance of significant volatility. This suits young investors with decades until retirement who can weather market storms. A moderate allocation—typically 60% stocks and 40% bonds—balances growth and stability, appropriate for middle-aged investors approaching retirement within 10-15 years.

Conservative allocations reverse the ratio to 40% stocks and 60% bonds, emphasising capital preservation and income generation over aggressive growth. This suits early retirees who need portfolio stability to fund near-term expenses. Very conservative allocations might hold just 20% stocks with 50% bonds and 30% cash, appropriate for advanced age when longevity risk decreases, while capital preservation becomes paramount.

An alternative approach uses the ‘rule of 110’ or ‘rule of 120’—subtracting your age from 110 or 120 to determine stock allocation percentage. A 40-year-old using the rule of 110 would hold 70% stocks (110 – 40 = 70). This simple heuristic automatically adjusts allocation as you age, though it may be too aggressive for risk-averse investors or too conservative for those comfortable with volatility.

 

Step 4: Implement Your Strategy with Low-Cost Funds

Once you’ve determined appropriate asset allocation, implementation becomes surprisingly straightforward thanks to modern index funds and ETFs. These investment vehicles allow beginners to achieve instant diversification across hundreds or thousands of securities with a single purchase, eliminating the need to select individual stocks or bonds. Better yet, low-cost index funds consistently outperform the majority of actively managed funds over long periods while charging a fraction of the fees.

 

Building a Simple Three-Fund Portfolio

The elegant simplicity of a three-fund portfolio has made it popular among DIY investors seeking maximum diversification with minimum complexity. This approach uses just three funds: a total U.S. stock market index fund capturing the entire domestic stock market, a total international stock market index fund providing global diversification, and a total bond market index fund offering fixed-income stability. These three holdings provide exposure to thousands of stocks and bonds globally while maintaining remarkably low costs.

For example, an investor might allocate 42% to a U.S. total stock market index fund, 18% to an international total stock market index fund, and 40% to a total bond market index fund. This creates a 60/40 stock/bond split with 70% of stock exposure in U.S. equities and 30% internationally—roughly matching global market capitalisation. As your circumstances change, you simply adjust the percentages among these three funds rather than trading dozens of individual holdings.

Major fund companies like Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab offer excellent low-cost index funds suitable for three-fund portfolios. Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSAX), Total International Stock Index Fund (VTIAX), and Total Bond Market Index Fund (VBTLX) represent popular choices with expense ratios under 0.10%—meaning you pay less than $10 annually per $10,000 invested. These minimal costs compound dramatically over decades compared to actively managed funds charging 1%+ annually.

 

Target-Date Funds: The Autopilot Option

For investors seeking maximum simplicity, target-date funds offer complete portfolios in single funds that automatically adjust allocation as you approach retirement. You simply choose the fund matching your approximate retirement year—a 2050 fund for someone retiring around 2050, a 2035 fund for earlier retirement, and so on. The fund starts with aggressive stock allocations when retirement is distant, then gradually shifts toward bonds and cash as the target date approaches.

Target-date funds handle all diversification, rebalancing, and allocation adjustments automatically, making them ideal for hands-off investors who want professional portfolio management at low cost. Major providers like Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab offer target-date funds with total expense ratios under 0.15%. The tradeoff for this convenience involves slightly higher costs than building your own three-fund portfolio and less control over specific allocation decisions. However, for many investors, the behavioural benefits of autopilot investing outweigh the modest additional costs.

 

The Critical Importance of Fee Management

Investment fees represent one of the few factors completely within your control, yet they profoundly impact long-term wealth accumulation. Consider two investors who each contribute $500 monthly for 30 years with 7% average annual returns. Investor A pays 1% in annual fees while Investor B pays just 0.1%. Despite identical contributions and gross returns, Investor A accumulates roughly $520,000 while Investor B reaches $610,000—a $90,000 difference from fees alone.

Actively managed mutual funds typically charge 0.5-1.5% annually while generating returns that, on average, underperform low-cost index funds after fees. Index funds from major providers charge 0.03-0.20% annually while delivering market-matching returns. This persistent underperformance by high-fee active funds stems from the simple mathematics that beating the market after fees requires beating it by more than those fees before costs—a hurdle most managers fail to clear consistently.

Examine the expense ratio of every fund you consider and default to the lowest-cost option unless you have compelling evidence justifying higher fees. Review fund prospectuses carefully and understand exactly what you’re paying. Many employer retirement plans offer lower-cost institutional share classes of the same funds available to retail investors—always choose the cheapest share class available to you. Over decades, these seemingly small fee differences compound into enormous wealth disparities.

 

Step 5: Maintain Your Strategy Through Rebalancing

Market movements inevitably push your portfolio away from target allocations over time. If stocks surge while bonds stagnate, your 60/40 portfolio might drift to 70/30, increasing risk beyond your planned tolerance. If stocks crash, you might find yourself at 50/50, reducing growth potential when you should be buying stocks at depressed prices. Rebalancing periodically returns your portfolio to target allocations, forcing the disciplined behaviour of selling high and buying low that most investors find psychologically difficult.

 

When and How to Rebalance

Research suggests that calendar-based rebalancing—checking allocations quarterly or annually and adjusting if they’ve drifted more than 5% from targets—provides an optimal balance between maintaining discipline and minimising transaction costs. Some investors prefer threshold-based rebalancing, where they adjust whenever any asset class deviates more than 5-10% from its target, regardless of time elapsed. Either approach works; the key lies in systematic implementation rather than emotional decision-making.

In taxable accounts, rebalancing triggers taxable events when you sell appreciated assets. You can minimise this tax drag by rebalancing primarily through new contributions—directing fresh money to underweighted assets rather than selling overweighted holdings. Additionally, tax-loss harvesting opportunities during market declines let you rebalance while generating tax benefits. In tax-advantaged accounts like IRAs and 401(k)s, rebalancing creates no tax consequences, making it simpler to maintain target allocations.

Many target-date funds and robo-advisors handle rebalancing automatically, removing the emotional and logistical burden from investors. If managing your own portfolio, set calendar reminders to review allocations rather than constantly monitoring and adjusting. Excessive rebalancing generates unnecessary costs and risks, as well as emotional overreaction to short-term market movements. The goal involves maintaining approximate alignment with targets, not achieving perfect precision at all times.

 

Step 6: Plan for Retirement Income Distribution

Building your retirement portfolio represents only half the challenge—distributing assets efficiently during retirement requires equally careful planning. The 4% withdrawal rule suggests that withdrawing 4% of your portfolio value annually, adjusted for inflation, provides a high probability that your savings last 30 years. While not perfect, this guideline offers a useful starting framework for thinking about sustainable withdrawal rates.

 

Calculating Required Retirement Income

Start by estimating your annual retirement expenses, typically around 70-80% of pre-retirement income, though individual needs vary considerably. Subtract guaranteed income sources, including Social Security benefits (use the Social Security Administration’s online calculator for personalised estimates), pension payments if you have traditional pension coverage, rental income from investment properties, and annuity payments from any annuities you own. The remaining gap represents the annual withdrawal needed from your investment portfolio.

For example, if you need $80,000 annually in retirement and receive $30,000 from Social Security plus $10,000 from a small pension, you must withdraw $40,000 yearly from investments. Using the 4% rule, this requires a portfolio of roughly $1,000,000 ($40,000 ÷ 0.04 = $1,000,000). If your portfolio falls short of this target, you face choices: save more aggressively before retirement, work longer to build additional savings, reduce planned retirement spending, or accept higher withdrawal rates with increased risk of outliving your assets.

 

Tax-Efficient Withdrawal Strategies

The sequence in which you withdraw from different account types significantly impacts your tax burden and portfolio longevity. Generally, draw first from taxable brokerage accounts, allowing tax-deferred accounts like traditional IRAs and 401(k)s to continue compounding tax-free. Next, withdraw from tax-deferred accounts, leaving Roth IRAs until last since these grow tax-free and offer the most flexibility.

However, this standard sequence requires modification based on your tax bracket. If you retire before claiming Social Security and have low taxable income, strategically converting traditional IRA funds to Roth accounts during these low-income years can reduce lifetime taxes. Similarly, beginning required minimum distributions at age 73 (as of 2024) forces withdrawals from traditional retirement accounts whether you need the money or not. Planning to minimise RMD impact involves strategic Roth conversions in earlier retirement years when tax rates remain low.

 

Common Mistakes Beginners Must Avoid

Understanding pitfalls that derail retirement portfolios helps you avoid costly errors that compound over decades. These mistakes appear repeatedly among beginning investors, yet remain completely avoidable with awareness and discipline.

 

Mistake 1: Attempting to Time the Market

Market timing—trying to buy before gains and sell before losses—proves alluring but consistently destroys wealth. Research shows that missing just the 10 best days in the market over 30 years reduces returns by roughly 50%. Since those best days often occur during volatile periods when investors feel most tempted to flee to safety, market timing typically means selling after declines and missing subsequent recoveries. The solution involves maintaining your allocation through all market conditions, rebalancing systematically, and trusting that time in the market beats timing the market.

 

Mistake 2: Chasing Performance and Following Hot Tips

Investments that performed best recently rarely repeat that performance going forward. Chasing last year’s top-performing sector or following stock tips from financial media typically results in buying high and selling low—the opposite of successful investing. Disciplined investors maintain broadly diversified portfolios rather than concentrating in whatever currently seems most exciting. Boring consistency beats exciting speculation over retirement timeframes.

 

Mistake 3: Ignoring Inflation’s Silent Erosion

Conservative investors sometimes hold excessive cash or short-term bonds, believing they’re being prudent by avoiding risk. However, inflation represents a guaranteed loss of purchasing power that erodes the real value of overly safe portfolios. At 3% annual inflation, money loses half its purchasing power in roughly 24 years. For retirements potentially lasting 30+ years, maintaining adequate stock exposure remains essential to outpace inflation and preserve purchasing power throughout retirement.

 

Sample Portfolio Construction Framework

 

Age Range	Stocks	Bonds	Cash
20s-30s	80-90%	10-20%	0%
40s-50s	70%	30%	0%
60-69	60%	35%	5%
70-79	40%	50%	10%
80+	20%	50%	30%

 

Conclusion: Start Now, Stay Disciplined, Trust the Process

Building a diversified retirement portfolio requires no special expertise or insider knowledge—just an understanding of fundamental principles, commitment to disciplined execution, and patience to let time work its magic. The core concepts prove remarkably simple: establish appropriate asset allocation based on your timeframe and risk tolerance, implement that allocation using low-cost index funds, rebalance periodically to maintain targets, and resist emotional reactions to market volatility. These straightforward steps, executed consistently over decades, reliably build retirement security.

The most common mistake among beginners involves delaying action while seeking perfect information or ideal market conditions. Markets never feel perfectly safe—there’s always some reason to wait for better timing. Yet historical data overwhelmingly demonstrates that time in the market beats timing the market. Starting with an imperfect but reasonable portfolio today beats waiting years for the ‘right’ moment that never arrives. You can refine your approach as you learn, but you cannot recover years of lost compounding.

Remember that diversification serves as your primary defence against devastating losses while maintaining the growth potential necessary for long retirements. Spreading investments across stocks, bonds, and cash in age-appropriate proportions, then diversifying within each asset class by company size, industry, and geography, provides resilience against whatever challenges markets present. This defensive positioning allows you to maintain discipline during inevitable downturns rather than panic-selling at the worst possible moment.

Finally, commit to the behavioural discipline that separates successful long-term investors from those who underperform despite adequate resources. Contribute consistently regardless of market conditions, rebalance systematically rather than emotionally, minimise fees relentlessly, and ignore financial media noise encouraging constant trading. These unglamorous habits compound into extraordinary results over the decades separating you from retirement. Your portfolio’s success depends less on brilliant investment selection than on your ability to maintain simple, proven strategies through all market environments. Start today, stay disciplined, and trust that time and compounding will reward your patience.

Spend some time for your future. 

To deepen your understanding of today’s evolving financial landscape, we recommend exploring the following articles:

Side Hustles vs. Your Career: The Harsh Math of Modern Gig Income

Advanced Credit Score Engineering: The 15/3 Payment Method and Limit Hacks

Why Replacing Developers with AI Is Going Horribly Wrong: The Hidden Crisis in Modern Software Development

Stop “Investing” in Diamonds: How Lab Stones Broke the Scarcity Myth

Credit Card Interest Rates Explained: Smart Money Cards and Strategies to Avoid Debt

Explore these articles to get a grasp on the new changes in the financial world.

Legal Disclaimer

This article provides general educational information about retirement investing and should not be considered personalised financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Individual circumstances vary significantly, and investment decisions should be made only after consulting with qualified financial advisors, tax professionals, and legal counsel who can evaluate your specific situation. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All investments carry risk, including potential loss of principal. Asset allocation and diversification strategies do not ensure profit or protect against loss in declining markets. The information presented reflects conditions as of 2026 and may change as laws, regulations, and market conditions evolve.

 

References

[1] Charles Schwab, ‘What Should Your Retirement Portfolio Include?’ Available: https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/what-should-your-retirement-portfolio-include

[2] Fidelity Investments, ‘Guide to Diversification,’ Available: https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/investing-ideas/guide-to-diversification

[3] Vanguard, ‘Portfolio Diversification: What It Is and How It Works,’ Available: https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/portfolio-management/diversifying-your-portfolio

[4] TIAA, ‘The Benefits of a Diversified Retirement Portfolio,’ Available: https://www.tiaa.org/public/learn/lifetime-income/retirement-portfolio-diversification-strategies

[5] U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, ‘Introduction to Investing,’ Available: https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing

[6] Social Security Administration, ‘Retirement Benefits Calculator,’ Available: https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/estimator.html

[7] Investopedia, ‘The Four Per cent Rule,’ Available: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/four-percent-rule.asp

[8] Bogleheads, ‘Bogleheads Investment Philosophy,’ Available: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads®_investment_philosophy