Knowing how to invest your retirement assets can be overwhelming– on one end, you want to have enough growth potential to keep pace with inflation and support a comfortable retirement, but the idea of market volatility can be scary.

To help support the investment decision-making process, many retirement plans have target date investments, model portfolios, or a managed account service that can help align your account with an easy solution that’s generally appropriate for your time horizon to retirement. You can log into your provider’s website for more information on your plan’s investment support offerings.

Your time horizon or number of years to retirement is an important factor in considering how much investment risk may be appropriate. Younger investors may have decades of time to recover from market bumps and can even benefit from regularly investing during down turns, as this is when prices are low. Those who are nearing retirement should consider how long they can make their assets last, keeping pace with inflation throughout retirement, and maximizing their remaining time in the workforce.

Our video on investing for the long term offers 4 considerations with regards to market volatility and time horizon to retirement:

Using asset allocation as part of your investment strategy neither assures nor guarantees better performance and cannot protect against loss of principal due to changing market conditions