@calmmoneycoach: Almost all your market risk lands in your last 15 working years Almost every dollar of market risk you will ever take gets crammed into your last 15 working years. At 25 you have a small portfolio and decades of earnings ahead of you. At 60 the portfolio is the biggest it will ever be and the earnings are nearly gone. Run a full working life and about 76 percent of your lifetime stock exposure lands after 50. So most people take tiny risk in the decades they could absorb a bad one, and enormous risk in the years they cannot. That, and not "stocks go up," is the actual argument for borrowing to invest. Samuelson and Merton worked it out in 1969. Every target date fund is built on it. Should you? Mostly no. Samuelson, who taught both of the men who wrote the popular version, rejected the conclusion publicly. His line was that in order to succeed you must first survive. Three things decide it. Your income has to be boring. Stable and salaried. Commission or self employed means your paycheque already moves with the economy, so you are levered before you borrow a dollar. Never use debt that can be called. At 2 to 1 the market only has to fall 29 percent before a broker liquidates you. At 1.5 to 1 that buffer is 52 percent. A HELOC cannot do that to you. Only margin can. And the real ceiling is not 2 to 1. Half Kelly, the size professionals actually use, lands near 1.3. Run six major crashes since 1929 against each ratio and it gets blunt. At 1.3x, one of them ends you. At 2.0x, five do. The market falling a third is not the risk. Being forced to sell into it is. Full breakdown and the calculator at calmmoneycoach.ca. Education, not advice.

Brian | Calm Money Coach

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Monday 10 August 2026 01:13:12 GMT