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If you are assuming a 25 - 35 year old, you must be very risk averse as 30% is pretty high for such a young person to have in bonds.

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It's interesting how that has changed over the years. For a long time, the standard advice was for investors of any age to have 50% stock and 50% bonds. Then "age in bonds" came around, and now many people recommend even less than that.

Of course, 50% bonds was easy to recommend 40 years ago when US savings bonds paid 5-7% annual interest, guaranteed for 30 years.

Stocks have outperformed bonds over long periods of time but are riskier, so if you need cash soonish (close to retirement), you should be in bonds, but if you're not going to touch that 401(k) for 35 years, then you should be in stocks.

> Of course, 50% bonds was easy to recommend 40 years ago when US savings bonds paid 5-7% annual interest, guaranteed for 30 years.

Inflation in 1980 was over 13%. 2015 was less than four fifths of one percent. Bonds today pay out much better than they did 40 years ago.

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