Serious Investing for Your 90s (Ages 90-99)

• Investment policy statement: In the 90s the statement is a continuity document whose first job is to make sure someone else can run the plan: a durable power of attorney, a named successor on each account, and a single list of what is held and where. Common mistake: Assuming the statement stays valid without updates, when the named agent has since died or moved, the power of attorney is out of date, or the institution requires its own form.
• Research sleeve: By the 90s, continuity matters more than any view a sleeve expresses. Common mistake: Keeping speculative positions that only the owner understands, leaving agents and heirs unable to evaluate them and open to a persuasive stranger offering to manage them.
• Concentration management: At 90 to 99 the aim is continuity with minimum complexity. Common mistake: Naming a power of attorney but leaving a complicated single-stock position with no written note of why it is held or who may sell it.
• Tax location: At ages 90-99 the main tax-location task is making sure the structure works without the owner. Common mistake: Leaving beneficiary designations unchanged for decades, so that an account's tax features and the owner's estate plan no longer match the people who will actually receive the assets.
• Rebalancing: In the 90s rebalancing is maintenance with the lowest possible number of steps. Common mistake: Approving a rebalance proposed by an unfamiliar caller or new adviser who recommends moving assets into an unfamiliar product, as if the request were routine portfolio maintenance.
• Scenario testing: By the 90s, the three standard scenarios give way to a simpler question: what happens if something unexpected occurs next year. Common mistake: Spending effort modeling markets while leaving documents out of date, such as an expired power of attorney or beneficiary forms naming someone who has died.
• Security research: At ages 90-99 the useful work is documentation. Common mistake: Keeping the reasons for holdings only in the owner's memory, so that an agent or heir facing sudden incapacity cannot tell which positions are deliberate and which are leftovers.
• Exit rules: At 90 to 99, the useful exit rule is the one a power of attorney or trustee can execute without judgment calls. Common mistake: Giving someone verbal permission to sell without a written authority, so the institution may refuse the trade and the household stalls when cash is needed.

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