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What if the investment strategy that works for a 25-year-old is a horrible idea for a 55-year-old?

What if you're investing like someone who's decades away from retirement when you're actually five years out?

What if the aggressive growth approach that's perfect for your 30-year-old coworker is completely wrong for you at 52?

Here's the truth: Investment strategies aren't universal. What you should do with your money at 28 is radically different from what you should do at 58. The risk you can afford to take at 22 would be reckless at 62.

Yet most investment advice treats everyone the same. "Just buy index funds and hold forever!" or “Just buy NVDA, PLTR, and IREN and sell the top!” Sure, that works for some people at some ages. But the 23-year-old and the 63-year-old should not be investing the same way.

In today's edition of Dinner Table Discussions, we're giving you age-appropriate investment strategies:

✅ Ages 18-35: Maximum growth and building your foundation
✅ Ages 36-50: Strategic de-risking while staying growth-focused
✅ Ages 51-65: Meaningful stability without abandoning growth
✅ Ages 66+: Income and preservation with some continued growth

Bon appétit! 🧑‍🍳

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🍽️ Main Course: Your Age Determines Your Strategy

You should be debt-free (except possibly your mortgage) before implementing any of these investment strategies.

Credit card debt at 22% interest will destroy any returns you get from investments. Student loans at 7% are eating your wealth faster than most investments can build it. Car payments, personal loans, medical debt… all of it needs to be gone first.

The only exception: your mortgage. Now, some people want to own their home and pay it off over time. Others prefer to rent and invest in assets besides real estate. Both approaches can build wealth. We covered why renting and investing might actually make you wealthier than buying in our Rent vs. Buy Guide.

With that foundation in place, let's talk about how to invest based on where you are in life and what you're trying to accomplish.

Ages 18-35: Aggressive Growth + Emergency Fund

If you're in this age range, you have the single most valuable asset for building wealth: time. Decades of compound growth ahead of you means you can take risks that older investors simply can't afford.

Your Strategy: Maximum Growth

Put the vast majority of your investment dollars into growth-oriented assets. This means stocks, stock index funds like the S&P 500, or even individual growth stocks if you have the risk tolerance and knowledge.

Why so aggressive? Because you have 30-40 years to ride out market downturns. The 2008 crash? If you were 25 and kept investing through it, you made a fortune when the market recovered. The COVID crash in 2020? Same thing. When you're young, crashes are buying opportunities, not disasters.

Time is your superpower. A market crash that would devastate a 65-year-old retiree is just a temporary dip for a 25-year-old with decades until retirement. You can afford to be aggressive because you have time to recover from any downturn.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Your portfolio allocation should be heavily weighted toward stocks:

• 80-90% in stock index funds or individual stocks

• Consider putting 5-10% of the above into Bitcoin instead

• 10-20% in bonds or more stable assets (honestly, even less is fine at this age)

Max out your 401(k) to get full employer match. That's free money you're leaving on the table if you don't take it. Then open and fund a Roth IRA (you can contribute up to $7,000 per year in 2025). If you've maxed those out and still have money to invest, use a regular taxable brokerage account.

As for Bitcoin, it’s a provably scarce asset that offers a direct hedge against the dollar losing its value. If you don’t care for it or don’t understand it, don’t invest in it, but if you’re interested, consider it. Not financial advice.

Side note: the Roth IRA is particularly powerful at this age because you're likely in a lower tax bracket now than you will be later in your career. You pay taxes on the contributions now at your current low rate, then everything grows tax-free forever. When you withdraw it in retirement, you pay zero taxes on the gains. For someone in their 20s or early 30s, this is an incredible deal.

Don't Forget the Emergency Fund

Before you put serious money into investments, build a 3-6 month emergency fund in a high-yield savings account. This prevents you from having to sell investments at a loss when life happens (and life always happens). Car breaks down, you lose your job, medical emergency hits. Without an emergency fund, you're forced to sell stocks at whatever the current price is, even if they happen to be down 30% from when you bought them.

The emergency fund is boring. It doesn't grow much. But it protects your investments from forced liquidation at the worst possible time.

The Power of Starting Early

Here's why this age range is so critical: A 25-year-old who invests $500 per month until age 65 at 8% returns will have $1.75 million. A 35-year-old who invests the same amount at the same return will have only $880,000. That extra 10 years of compound growth is worth nearly $900,000.

Starting early matters more than almost anything else. Time in the market beats timing the market, every single time.

Ages 36-50: Slight De-Risking While Staying Growth-Oriented

You're in your peak earning years. You probably have more financial responsibilities than you did at 25: kids, mortgage, maybe aging parents who need support. You still have time for growth, but you can't afford to lose everything in a market crash because you don't have 30 years to recover anymore.

Your Strategy: Growth with Guardrails

You're still primarily focused on growth, but you're starting to build in some stability. You're not abandoning stocks (that would be a blunder in my opinion, but do your own research) but you're adding some less volatile assets to smooth out the ride.

Think of it this way: At 25, a 40% market crash is just an opportunity to buy stocks on sale. At 45, a 40% market crash when you're trying to send kids to college or you're 10 years from retirement might be genuinely scary. You need some buffer.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Your portfolio starts to shift slightly toward stability, but still remains growth-focused:

• 70-80% stocks and stock index funds

• Consider keeping 5-10% of the above in Bitcoin

• 20-30% bonds, dividend stocks, or other stable income-producing assets

You should be continuing to max out your 401(k) and IRAs. At this age, you're probably earning more than you were in your 20s, so hitting those contribution limits should be easier. If you have kids and college is a goal, you might start 529 accounts for them.

Your emergency fund should grow too. At this stage of life, 6-9 months of expenses is more appropriate than 3-6 months. You have more people depending on you, more fixed costs (mortgage, not rent), and potentially aging parents who might need financial help.

The Big Mistake People Make at This Age

Getting too conservative too early. Yes, you should de-risk somewhat compared to your 20s. But if you shift everything to bonds and ultra-safe assets at 40, you're leaving massive growth on the table.

Here's the math: If you're 40 and planning to retire at 65, you still have 25 years until retirement. That's enough time to ride out multiple market cycles. If you go too conservative now, inflation will eat away at your "safe" investments, and you'll reach retirement with far less than you could have had.

The old rule was "100 minus your age equals your stock allocation." So at 40, you'd have 60% in stocks. That rule is outdated for a world where people live into their 90s. You need more growth exposure than that.

Maximizing Your Peak Earning Years

This is the age where increasing your income becomes critical. Your career should be hitting its stride. You have experience, skills, and a track record. This is when you should be negotiating raises, taking on high-visibility projects, or even switching companies for significant pay bumps.

Every $10,000 raise you get at 40 and invest for 25 years at 8% returns becomes about $68,000 by retirement. Your earning power at this age is perhaps your most valuable asset. Don't waste it by staying comfortable in a job that underpays you.

Ages 51-65: Meaningful De-Risking Without Abandoning Growth

Here's where conventional wisdom often gets it dangerously wrong. The old advice was to shift almost entirely into bonds and ultra-safe investments as you approach retirement. Move everything to stability, protect what you've built, don't take any risks.

That was fine when people retired at 65 and died at 75 or 80. Ten years of retirement required stability, not growth.

Why the Old Rules Don't Work Anymore

But now? People are living into their 90s. If you retire at 65, you need your portfolio to last 25-30 years. If you're 100% in bonds earning 4% while inflation runs at 3%, you're barely staying ahead. One major medical expense and you're going backwards. One decade of above-average inflation and your purchasing power is cut in half.

You still need growth. Even at this age, you need your money to continue growing, not just sit there "safely" getting eroded by inflation.

Your Strategy: Balanced with Continued Growth Exposure

You're de-risking significantly compared to your 30s and 40s. You're no longer going 80-90% stocks. But you're keeping a substantial portion in growth assets to ensure your money lasts through what could be a very long retirement.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Your portfolio shifts toward stability, but maintains meaningful growth exposure:

• 50-60% stocks and stock index funds (yes, still this much)

• If you have Bitcoin in the above, consider trimming to 3-5%

• 40-50% dividend stocks, high-yield savings accounts

You're shifting gradually toward income-producing assets. Instead of pure growth stocks, you might move toward dividend-paying blue-chip stocks that still grow but also throw off income. Instead of just stock index funds, you add bond index funds that provide steady returns with less volatility. Here’s a guide to building a dividend portfolio.

If you're 50 or older, you can make "catch-up contributions" to your 401(k) and IRA (extra money beyond the normal limits). For 2025, that's an extra $7,500 to your 401(k) and an extra $1,000 to your IRA. Take advantage of this. These final 15 years before retirement are critical for building your nest egg.

Your emergency fund should be very large at this point: 12+ months of expenses. You're close enough to retirement that a job loss at this age could be devastating if you're not prepared. You need a substantial cushion.

The Gradual Transition Strategy

Don't shift your entire portfolio from growth stocks to savings accounts and dividend stocks overnight. That's a recipe for disaster if you happen to do it right before a major bull market. Instead, gradually move money from pure growth stocks into dividend-paying stocks and bonds over the decade from 55 to 65.

Maybe at 55 you're still 65% stocks. By 60, you're 58% stocks. By 65, you're 50% stocks. This gradual shift protects you from market timing risk while still allowing for substantial growth during your final working years.

Calculating Your Retirement Number

This is when you need to get serious about the actual math. How much money do you need to retire? The simple formula is the "4% rule": Multiply your desired annual retirement income by 25.

Want $60,000 per year in retirement? You need $1.5 million invested ($60,000 = 4% of $1.5 million). Want $80,000 per year? You need $2 million.

Social Security will cover some of your expenses; maybe $25,000-$35,000 per year depending on your work history. But don't count on it covering everything. Assume it provides 30-40% of what you need and plan for your investments to cover the rest.

Run the numbers. Are you on track? If not, what needs to change? Can you work a few extra years? Can you cut expenses in retirement? Can you save more aggressively in these final years before retirement? Here’s our guide to retiring early and how to calculate your retirement number.

Ages 66+: Income and Stability Focus

At this point, you're living off your investments. The accumulation phase is over. You're in the distribution phase. Your goals have completely changed from "grow wealth" to "don't run out of money."

(I acknowledge that many 65+ year old people have their own businesses and aren’t interested in retirement like this. That is amazing, and I fully support that. This section is for people excited about retiring or who want to secure their income for the remainder of their lives before diving into a business venture.)

Your Strategy: Income-Bearing Investments with Some Growth

The bulk of your portfolio should be in stable, income-producing assets that provide steady returns without wild swings. But even now, keeping 20-30% in growth investments makes sense to combat inflation over what could be a 20+ year retirement.

Why keep any growth assets at this age? Because inflation is relentless. If you're 72 and could live to 92, that's 20 years of inflation eating away at your purchasing power. What costs $60,000 per year today will cost $81,000 per year in 20 years at just 3% inflation. You still need some growth to keep up.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Your portfolio is now heavily weighted toward stability and income:

• 60-70% dividend stocks, high-yield savings, possibly annuities

• 30-40% stock index funds for continued growth

• Probably selling all Bitcoin if you have any in the above percentages

You're living off the income your portfolio produces. This comes in two main forms:

Approach 1: The 4% Rule 

You withdraw 4% of your total portfolio value each year. Example: If you need $80,000 per year to live on, you put $2,000,000 into a high-yield savings account. Historically, this approach means your money lasts 30+ years even accounting for market fluctuations and inflation.

Approach 2: The Dividend Strategy

You structure your portfolio to produce enough dividend income to cover your living expenses without touching principal. If you need $80,000 per year and your dividend stocks average 4% yield, you need $2 million in those dividend stocks. You live off the $40,000 in annual dividends.

Both approaches work. The 4% rule gives you more flexibility in what you invest in. The dividend approach provides more psychological comfort because you're not "spending down" your savings—you're just living off the income they produce.

The Importance of Simplicity at This Age

Complex investment strategies become harder to manage as you age. Mental acuity declines. Energy decreases. The appetite for researching individual stocks or rebalancing complex portfolios fades.

At this age, simplicity matters enormously. A portfolio of three index funds (growth stocks, dividend stocks, REITs) is far better than 40 individual stocks you can't keep track of. A straightforward 4% withdrawal strategy beats a complicated system that requires constant monitoring.

Make sure your spouse (if you have one) understands your investment strategy and can manage it if you become unable to. Make sure your adult children know where accounts are and how to access them if needed. Document everything.

Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)

At age 73 (or 75 if you were born after 1960), you're required to start taking distributions from traditional 401(k)s and IRAs. The government wants its tax money. You'll need to calculate your RMD each year and withdraw at least that amount, or face penalties.

This is another reason to keep things simple. Managing RMDs across 10 different retirement accounts is a nightmare. Consolidating accounts before you reach this age makes your life much easier.

Bottom Line

Investment strategies are not one-size-fits-all. What you should do at 25 is completely different from what you should do at 55.

The key is matching your strategy to your specific life stage. There's no single "right" way to invest across the board. There's only the right way for your specific situation. Figure out where you are, where you're going, and invest accordingly.

Cheers to getting 1% better each week! 🥂

👂 We’d love to hear from you

👂 What's your current investing strategy? Are you following advice meant for someone else's situation?

We’d love to hear about it—and your story could help someone else do the same.
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Thanks for reading,
—Your friends @ Future Funders 🍽️

P.S. Forward this to a friend who's 30 years old and investing like they're 60. 😅