You may think you have done your bit to meet your needs in the future by saving and investing. But you may still find yourself with inadequate funds to meet the goals, or unable to access the funds when you need them, or holding a portfolio that is too risky for your comfort. Any and all of these disasters could confront you if you make any of these mistakes while building and managing your portfolio.
Have a goal
If you don’t identify your goals clearly, you will not know how much money you need for your goal and for how long you have to accumulate the corpus. These two factors, in turn, define how much you need to apportion from your current savings for the goal and how the money may be invested.
If the goal is well into the future, you can look at growth assets like equity to take advantage of higher returns. Saving for near-term goals will be in investments with steady, albeit lower, returns. If your investments are not aligned to goals, your corpus may fall short of your needs. Or, you may have to sell at a loss or bear a cost to redeem when you need the funds.
