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When you sit down with a financial professional to talk about investments, one of the first terms you may hear when discussing your portfolio is 'asset allocation'. To take some of the mystical feel away from the term, let's define it in plain words. All asset allocation really means is the breakdown of how much of your total investment portfolio is placed in certain individual asset classes or types of investments.

The conversation is sure to be accompanied by visual aids. The most common graphical representation of asset allocation models is the pie chart. It shows how much of your investment pie is made up of each particular asset class, usually showing a percentage number for each slice of pie. Watch for it and you'll see it.

When you start making decisions about portfolio construction, the first fork in the road usually is how much will you allocate to equity investments versus fixed-income investments. If that sounds Greek to you, relax; it's finance-speak for stocks vs. bonds. (Or it used to be that simple. Truth is, today the investment world is filled with unique assets, all different in the way they're constructed and the way they behave. The basic distinction is still there, however.) Equity investments are those that represent an ownership interest in some underlying thing of value, usually shares of a publicly traded corporation, or a mutual fund that invests in such. Fixed-income assets in turn do not represent an interest in any underlying asset. Instead, when you buy a fixed-income asset, such as a corporate bond you're essentially lending your money to the issuer. In exchange the issuer pays you interest over the life of the bond and you get your principal back at the end of the term.

So here's where the pie charts come out and you'll hear professionals talking about '80-20' or '70-30' allocations. Generally that means you've got, or they are recommending, 80% or 70% go to equity investments and 20% or 30% to fixed-income assets, respectively.

Many different factors go into the asset allocation decision such as your age, what the intended purposes of the investments are, risk tolerance, and your overall tax situation. Don't take this discussion lightly. Investment research has shown that asset allocation is one of the biggest drivers of investment returns.

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