What’s age got to do with it?

Age is one of the most important factors in deciding which investments may suit your needs. That’s because your age generally determines:

what stage you’re up to in your retirement savings journey
how long you’re likely to have left in the workforce, which is the time you can be adding to, and growing, your super through regular contributions and investment returns
how close you are to retirement, which is the time when you’ll likely be relying on the money you’ve saved in your super account to help fund your retirement, and you may want to shield it from the possibility of losses in value during this time, and
the likely retirement years you’ve got ahead of you and how long you need that money to last.

How does Lifecycle work?

There are 36 Lifecycle stages. In the early years of Lifecycle (age 47 and under), your super maintains a higher allocation to growth assets and a higher level of investment risk, appropriate to your age and your investment time frame.

From age 48, your Lifecycle investment undergoes a series of annual changes with each birthday. Within each Lifecycle stage, your investment is still structured to help your super grow, and the yearly changes in the way your portfolio is invested help to reduce the level of investment risk in your super. We do it by gradually reducing the allocation to growth assets in your portfolio, while increasing the allocation to defensive assets.

From age 82 onwards, your asset mix is designed to help your savings last through your expected retirement years. At the same time the greater emphasis on reducing risk in your portfolio helps to shield your savings from the impacts of volatility.

Understanding Lifecycle