Q: How do you handle your portfolio if your concern is cash preservation for yourself rather than for any heirs and the time to recover from market falls is no longer there?
5i Research Answer:
A lot of this becomes an asset allocation question. The shorter ones time horizon becomes, the less risk they should be taking because, as you hinted at, you have less time to recover if there is a market drawdown, and having to withdraw during that same drawdown makes it even harder to claw ones way back from the declines. This typically means tilting a portfolio more toward safer, dividend paying names on the equity side (while trying to keep things diversified as much as possible) as well as adding more reliable fixed income exposure into the portfolio and possibly even holding a bit of a higher cash balance.