We all know it makes sense to have a different portfolio allocation before retirement than you actually have in retirement.

But how and when do we actually go about making that change?

That's the topic for today on Ready for Retirement.

This is another episode of Ready for Retirement.

I'm your host, James Cannell, and I'm here to teach you how to get the

most of the life with your money. And now, on to the episode. Today's topic is based on a listener

question, and this question comes from Alan. Alan says this, James, I really like your podcast. You

always bring a lot of useful information that I can incorporate into my retirement plan.

I will be retiring in a few months, and unfortunately, I am weighted way too heavily in stocks and need to add more fixed income to balance out my portfolio.

It's my fault for not doing it earlier.

We will be getting about $200,000 on the sale of my mother's house very soon.

We've already maxed out our IRAs this year, but even if we didn't,

it would only add $15,000 to our portfolio. We probably need to add another $50,000 to $75,000

to fixed income. The only option I see is to put that money into a taxable bond fund. We're only in

the 12% tax bracket, so it wouldn't be a huge tax hit. Any other thoughts you may have as to where to put the bond fund or at least how to balance

out the portfolio.

Thank you, Alan.

Well, Alan, thank you for that question.

And essentially what he's asking is I have my portfolio mix, but this portfolio mix is maybe

too heavily weighted towards stocks because I've been growing my portfolio and so I've had a stock and a growth focus, but now I'm going to retire.

And as I'm retiring, I now need to make an abrupt shift towards a new allocation because I'm

too heavily weighted in stocks. And on top of that, I have this new inflow of cash coming in.

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