Why Holding Cash Now is a Terrible Idea (if you ever want to retire)

There are a lot of people in the comments who seem to think they can time the markets, and get back in “when things look better”. Here’s two investing quotes I think are appropriate: “Fear has a far greater grasp on human action than the impressive weight of historical evidence.” - Jeremy Siegel “Far more money has been lost by investors in preparing for [stock market] corrections, or anticipating corrections, than has been lost in the corrections themselves.” - Peter Lynch

I am 55, and love your videos, just checked and adjusted the risk profile of my pension after seeing your video explained so comprehensively, thankyou

James your videos are brilliant, always looking forward to the next one. Thanks for all of the fantastic FREE advice so far.

Thanks James, first time I have seen your channel. Great presentation, and clearly explained. Subscribed from Perth Australia. Cheers mate!✊

Excellent stuff very timely. Shared with someone who has been pushed to holding cash.

I do a daily check on the FTSE 100 Price use a chart to buy and sell XUKX yesterday my FTSE 100 chart showed good day to buy "Less than 25% (Strong Buy)" column FTSE100 was at 11.06% so I bought XUKX(long) and sold my XUKShort

Brilliant advice and a great stress-buster!

I believe you should generally have 3-6 months' living costs in "cash", then build up enough in pension as bonds for 2 yrs living costs by the time you retire. Everything else in stocks! Once you retire: if stocks are up, then sell them to live on; if stocks are down then sell the bonds to live on until the market recovers (at which point you sell stocks to bring the bonds back to enough for 2 yrs). I'd suggest as a rule of thumb that buying 10% to 20% bonds as your pension starts growing is good, then 80-90% is invested in higher growth stocks, but once you hit enough for 2 years' living then reduce bond investment to only enough to keep up with inflation.

Love this content, reassuring, thank you James

by far the best video so far . I had to share with my husband who is too risk averse and thinks savings account are safer

Great advice. I am retired and have realised that derisking befpre retirement is just not on. When you retire your hopeful expectation of life is at least 20 years so why go safe just keep going for growth. You do need to pay yourself a "wage" from your investments so financially plan for say 2 rolling years of slow disinvestment to reduce the risk should a stock market decide to correct itself and buy perhaps some of those cash deposits paying interest which mature just in time to cover your wages.

Nice work James

Thanks for another great video. I really appreciate how well you explain things and the examples you use to make it relatable. I’m sharing this with both my partner and son as it will help with their aims to improve their financial literacy.

I'm your new fan. So well explained..

Thankyou so much for advice on one of your previous videos. I am retiring early in July

Love your videos James. You have given me the confidence to invest in the stock market thanks so much❤❤

Fantastic video, thank you!

Great video as always James ... I was wondering how this holds vs property. I'm trying to understand whether it's better to hold on to a buy to let flat ... or sell it put the money into the house I live in and then put the 'saving' each month into my pension pot. It seems a hard one to properly judge.

It really is that simple ... if you don't look.

Hi James. I've just discovered your channel, and have been binge-watching - excellent stuff! I've just transferred a pension into my sipp, so it arrived as cash (now parked in a moneymarket fund - thank you!) I've also analysed all my pensions so I know that I want to spend about 70% of that cash on equities, and about 30% in UK bonds. The question I'm wrestling with is how to schedule my buy-in. Lump sum? Monthly? Limit orders? Most likely some combination of the 3, but one of your worked examples based on historic data and probabilities would be fantastic - I imagine there are a few people in similar scenarios