By Alana Benson | NerdWallet

The investing information provided on this page is for educational purposes only. NerdWallet, Inc. does not offer advisory or brokerage services, nor does it recommend or advise investors to buy or sell particular stocks, securities or other investments.

The passage of time feels like it creeps, then pounces: Suddenly, party conversation focuses on real estate, how we’re going to bed earlier and our realization that we have no idea what type of jeans to wear. For years, millennials have been the butt of financial jokes: “They spend all their money on lattes and avocado toast!” and “Why don’t they get a minimum wage job to pay for college like I did?” But the clichés got old quickly.

And now, as millennials move deeper into their 30s and 40s, there are some things to consider changing up. Most notably, our investments.

Your portfolio might need to chill

For those lucky enough to invest early on, the advice was pretty standard: Invest often, and invest in aggressive assets to take advantage of long-term growth. The target-date funds held in 401(k)s were typically calibrated to higher-risk investments. Maybe the most aggressive of us dipped our toes in crypto and meme stocks at some point. After all, you’ve got all the time in the world to ride out the highs and lows of the market when you’re 24.

But now, we’re more mature. And with that wisdom comes new responsibilities, like adjusting our asset allocation. Asset allocation is just a fancy phrase for what percentage of your portfolio is in each investment. For example, a 20-year-old’s investment portfolio of $100 (for easy math), might be 90% in stocks and 10% in bonds, or $90 and $10, respectively. As you get closer to retirement, it’s a good rule of thumb to shift that allocation to a less risky position, such as 60% stocks and 40% bonds, though the exact percentages will depend on your personal situation.

“In general, as we get older we tend to take fewer risks,” says Aaron Hatch, a certified financial planner and founder of Woven Capital in Redding, California. “In your early 20s, when you have nothing to lose and time on your side, you can afford to take all kinds of risks. However, as we millennials accumulate assets in our 401(k)s and elsewhere, and we inch toward retirement, it might be worth considering taking a little risk off the table by slightly decreasing exposure to stocks or other risky investments.”

Shifting strategies

One easy way to figure out if it’s time to shift your asset allocation is to look at model portfolios. Some brokerages will show examples of what their target-date funds look like for different timelines to retirement. You can consider these illustrations and adjust yours accordingly.

For example, if you’re 30 and you’re planning to retire when you are 65, you could check out portfolios that show what a target-date fund looks like for those retiring in 2060. You may see a majority of stock-based funds with about 10% in bonds. If you’re in your 40s, that recommended portfolio may be closer to 15% in bonds.

Model portfolios can be helpful, but they aren’t perfect. Maybe you own a chunk of crypto or some real estate. These kinds of investments should be considered when shifting your assets, and it can help to get a second opinion. Some financial advisors will meet with you as needed to give your portfolio a checkup.

“When developing a tax-efficient withdrawal strategy and systematic withdrawals from your accounts, this is truly where working with a financial planner can save you thousands,” says Marigny deMauriac, a CFP and founder of deMAURIAC, a financial planning firm in New Orleans. “We understand the tax implications of withdrawals and can help you coordinate withdrawals with Social Security benefits and other sources of income to optimize your retirement.”

What happens now matters in retirement

When you’re shifting your asset allocation now, it pays to think strategically about your future.

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“The types of accounts an individual has when they retire, along with their cash needs, should determine their withdrawal strategy in retirement. Because 401(k)s and Rollover IRA withdrawals are taxed as income, it is important to keep taxes in mind when deciding from which account types to pull money for living expenses in retirement,” Hatch says.

Think ahead to retirement. When you sell your investments so you can have spending money in retirement, you’ll likely have to pay capital gains tax on those earnings — unless you invested within a Roth 401(k) or IRA account and the taxes were already paid. But if you know you’ll need to pay taxes on that money, it’s worth calculating what you’ll owe and setting it aside.

And according to deMauriac, you may still need to be invested throughout retirement.

“Since you might live to be in your 90s, chances are, you can’t just shift everything to cash and call it a day,” deMauriac says. “Most people need to plan for growth in their accounts to outpace inflation, even in retirement.”

Asset allocation, like many of the chores of millennial middle age, may not feel glamorous, but it may help us pay for all that avocado toast we’ll enjoy in retirement.

This column was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. The content is for educational and informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice.

Alana Benson is a writer at NerdWallet. Email: abenson@nerdwallet.com. X (formerly known as Twitter): @alananeedsanap.

 

The article Millennials, It’s Time to Change Your Investment Strategy originally appeared on NerdWallet.

The best fit for the Chicago Cubs remains available in free agency.

And yet the waiting game continues for outfielder Cody Bellinger and the Cubs. A reunion after a stellar one-year partnership in 2023 makes a lot of sense between the two sides.

Bellinger, 28, was a dynamic force in the middle of the Cubs lineup, giving them much-needed power from the left side they still haven’t adequately addressed even with the trade acquisition of top-50 prospect Michael Busch. For Bellinger, it would be a return to an environment and hitting infrastructure where he thrived in a bounce-back season that showed what he is still capable of when fully healthy.

President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, though, has demonstrated over his three-plus years in this position that the Cubs will be principled in how they operate in free agency. Bellinger’s agent Scott Boras has also not been afraid to wait things out, even if it means his top players do not sign until spring training is underway. The Cubs ideally would like to have their roster in place by the time pitchers and catchers report to Mesa, Ariz., on Feb. 14. Given how much work still needs to be done with three weeks to go, that might not happen, especially if the Cubs are willing to wait and see how Bellinger’s free-agency courtship plays out.

“We don’t have any fixed deadline,” general manager Carter Hawkins said earlier this month. “I think in a perfect world you have your team going into spring training. I think a lot of these players that sign in March and into the season, there’s just a tough transition phase to get back up to speed when you’re behind the eight ball that way. It doesn’t mean that it can’t work, but just seems like it’s harder to work. That’s anecdotal of course.

“We wouldn’t rule it out. That’d be foolish for us to rule anything out. But, yeah, we’d much prefer to get our team sooner than later.”

If Bellinger’s Cubs teammates had any influence on whether the slugger returns, he garnered unanimous support for a reunion recently during the Cubs Convention.

Right-hander Kyle Hendricks credited Bellinger’s role in a collectively strong defense that took pressure off the pitching staff and what it would mean to have that type of dynamic player come back to Chicago, though the veteran also understands this is a business. Center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong hopes Bellinger re-signs, regardless of the impact it would have on his playing time.

Left fielder Ian Happ applauded Bellinger for going through what has become a prolonged free-agent process and being in the tough part of negotiations at this point of the offseason, still not knowing where he will play in 2024 and beyond. Happ said part of why he agreed to a shorter three-year extension was so the front office could pursue bigger, longer-term free-agent deals in a win-now environment. Bellinger would certainly fit those parameters.

“If they want to move on from me in three years, that’s their prerogative and they can do it so I think they’re going to build the team in the best way that they see fit and as players, we trust Jed and Carter to do that and give us a chance to compete at the top of the division and into the playoffs,” Happ said.

Left-hander Justin Steele said it was hard to describe the impact Bellinger had last year but that the Cubs would have a sizable hole to replace if he doesn’t return.

“Everybody saw what he did on the field and it was obviously magnificent what he was able to do, but the teammate and the person behind the player is by far the best attribute he has,” Steele said. “The guy showed up in the locker room every day with a smile on his face, good vibes, everybody wants to show up and talk to him that day. So that for me, that’s something that goes such a long way, especially with young guys coming up.”

Bellinger’s defensive flexibility would be a coveted asset for manager Craig Counsell and the Cubs’ roster construction. Playing at an elite level in center field and first base did not go unappreciated by Dansby Swanson, particularly with how it can help with mixing and matching with the lineup, allowing a manager to “press a few different buttons that not maybe any other team could.”

Since signing with the Cubs last offseason, Swanson has been in regular communication with Hoyer and Hawkins, bouncing ideas off each other, communicating openly and being honest with the shortstop when moves might be happening. Swanson is confident that, Bellinger or no Bellinger, the front office isn’t done improving a roster that fell one game short of the postseason.

“At the end of the day, they have a plan, they know what they want,” Swanson said. “They know what they’re looking for. The market overall has been slow. I mean, other than, the billion dollars out west, there really hasn’t been a ton. … They know that we need to get better and we will get better and I think you’ve started to see that recently with some things starting to fall in place and I think that’s only going to continue to grow from there.”

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Darius Tahir | (TNS) KFF Health News

Early in the morning of Feb. 21, Change Healthcare, a company unknown to most Americans that plays a huge role in the U.S. health system, issued a brief statement saying some of its applications were “currently unavailable.”

By the afternoon, the company described the situation as a “cyber security” problem.

Since then, it has rapidly blossomed into a crisis.

The company, recently purchased by insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, reportedly suffered a cyberattack. The impact is wide and expected to grow. Change Healthcare’s business is maintaining health care’s pipelines — payments, requests for insurers to authorize care, and much more. Those pipes handle a big load: Change says on its website, “Our cloud-based network supports 14 billion clinical, financial, and operational transactions annually.”

Initial media reports have focused on the impact on pharmacies, but techies say that’s understating the issue. The American Hospital Association says many of its members aren’t getting paid and that doctors can’t check whether patients have coverage for care.

But even that’s just a slice of the emergency: CommonWell, an institution that helps health providers share medical records, information critical to care, also relies on Change technology. The system contained records on 208 million individuals as of July 2023. Courtney Baker, CommonWell marketing manager, said the network “has been disabled out of an abundance of caution.”

“It’s small ripple pools that will get bigger and bigger over time, if it doesn’t get solved,” Saad Chaudhry, chief digital and information officer at Luminis Health, a hospital system in Maryland, told KFF Health News.

Here’s what to know about the hack:

Who Did It?

Media reports are fingering ALPHV, a notorious ransomware group also known as Blackcat, which has become the target of numerous law enforcement agencies worldwide. While UnitedHealth Group has said it is a “suspected nation-state associated” attack, some outside analysts dispute the linkage. The gang has previously been blamed for hacking casino companies MGM and Caesars, among many other targets.

The Department of Justice alleged in December, before the Change hack, that the group’s victims had already paid it hundreds of millions of dollars in ransoms.

Is This a New Problem?

Absolutely not. A study published in JAMA Health Forum in December 2022 found that the annual number of ransomware attacks against hospitals and other providers doubled from 2016 to 2021.

“It’s more of the same, man,” said Aaron Miri, the chief digital and information officer at Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Florida.

Because the assaults disable the target’s computer systems, providers have to shift to paper, slowing them down and making them vulnerable to missing information.

Further, a study published in May 2023 in JAMA Network Open examining the effects of an attack on a health system found that waiting times, median length of stay, and incidents of patients leaving against medical advice all increased — at neighboring emergency departments. The results, the authors wrote, mean cyberattacks “should be considered a regional disaster.”

Attacks have devastated rural hospitals, Miri said. And wherever health care providers are hit, patient safety issues follow.

What Does It Mean for Patients?

Year after year, more Americans’ health data is breached. That exposes people to identity theft and medical error.

Care can also suffer. For example, a 2017 attack, dubbed “NotPetya,” forced a rural West Virginia hospital to reboot its operations and hit pharma company Merck so hard it wasn’t able to fulfill production targets for an HPV vaccine.

Because of the Change Healthcare attack, some patients may be routed to new pharmacies less affected by billing problems. Patients’ bills may also be delayed, industry executives said. At some point, many patients are likely to receive notices their data was breached. Depending on the exact data that has been pilfered, those patients may be at risk for identity theft, Chaudhry said. Companies often offer free credit monitoring services in those situations.

“Patients are dying because of this,” Miri said. Indeed, an October preprint from researchers at the University of Minnesota found a nearly 21% increase in mortality for patients in a ransomware-stricken hospital.

How Did It Happen?

The Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry coordinating group that disseminates intel on attacks, has told its members that flaws in an application called ConnectWise ScreenConnect are to blame. Exact details couldn’t be confirmed.

It’s a tool tech support teams use to remotely troubleshoot computer problems, and the attack is “apparently fairly trivial to execute,” H-ISAC warned members. The group said it expects additional victims and advised its members to update their technology. When the attack first hit, the AHA recommended its members disconnect from systems both at Change and its corporate parent, UnitedHealth’s Optum unit. That would affect services ranging from claims approvals to reference tools.

Millions of Americans see physicians and other practitioners employed by UnitedHealth and are covered by the company’s insurance plans.

UnitedHealth has said only Change’s systems are affected and that it’s safe for hospitals to use other digital services provided by UnitedHealth and Optum, which include claims filing and processing systems.

But not many chief information officers “are jumping to reconnect,” Chaudhry said. “It’s an uneasy feeling.”

Miri says Baptist is using the conglomerate’s technology and that he trusts UnitedHealth’s word that it’s safe.

Where’s the Federal Government?

Neither executive was sanguine about the future of cybersecurity in health care. “It’s going to get worse,” Chaudhry said.

“It’s a shame the feds aren’t helping more,” Miri said. “You’d think if our nuclear infrastructure were under attack the feds would respond with more gusto.”

While the departments of Justice and State have targeted the ALPHV group, the government has stayed behind the scenes more in the aftermath of this attack. Chaudhry said the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services have been attending calls organized by the AHA to brief members about the situation.

Miri said rural hospitals in particular could use more funding for security and that agencies like the Food and Drug Administration should have mandatory standards for cybersecurity.

There’s some recognition among officials that improvements need to be made.

“This latest attack is just more evidence that the status quo isn’t working and we have to take steps to shore up cybersecurity in the health industry,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a longtime advocate for stronger cybersecurity, in a statement to KFF Health News.

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If you’re caught in a cybersecurity breach, here are steps to take:

– Monitor the notices and bills you receive from insurers and providers. Contact them immediately if anything seems suspicious.

– If a medical provider requests your Social Security number on intake forms, leave the space blank, and politely push back if they insist.

– If your health plan offers free credit or identity theft monitoring following a breach, take it.

If you’re concerned your data has been compromised:

– Go to the Federal Trade Commission’s identity theft site to file an identity theft report, if appropriate.

– If someone used your name to get medical care, contact every provider who may have been involved and get copies of your medical records. Correct any errors.

– Notify your health plan’s fraud department and send a copy of the FTC identity theft report.

– File free fraud alerts with the three major credit reporting agencies.

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(KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF