Cooking the Books podcast: How the rule of 100 helps decide your investing strategy

How you handle your money will change entirely depending on your timeline. Photo / Getty

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's how a rule of thumb can give guidance on your personal investing strategy. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Time is everything when you're investing.

Long-time podcast listeners will have heard it here before - the longer you have, the more that risky investments will be right for you, like shares or property.

If you have less time, a lower risk investment like bonds or term deposits are usually the suggestion.

Well if you're looking for more detail on this idea, there's a rule of thumb that some people like to use.

It's the rule of 100, or, 100 minus age.

It means that if you take 100, subtract your age, then what's left is the percentage of your investments that should be higher risk, because you have the time to build your wealth like that.

So for me, at 31, the suggestion is 69 per cent of my investments going into higher risk options.

But like any rule of thumb, there are exceptions, there's fine print, there are little adjustments before you can apply it to your own personal situation.

For the latest podcast, I talked to Mark Lister, from Craig's Investment Partners.

We discussed when the rule of 100 works, when it doesn't, good low risk options, and how property fits into all of this.

For the interview, watch the video podcast above, or listen to the audio below.

If you have a question about this podcast, or question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here, Instagram here and Twitter here.

You can subscribe to this podcast on iHeartRadio, Apple podcasts app, or Spotify, to make sure you never miss an episode.