How to use bonds as a safe place for your money

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's why all investments need a certain amount of safety, and how to organise that. Hosted by Frances Cook.<br /><br />No matter where you're at in your investing journey, you need a mix of high and low risk investments. <br /><br />In a previous episode, I talked about the rule of 100 – the idea that if you take your age, subtract that from 100, what's left is the ideal percentage of high risk investments you should have your money in. <br /><br />That's because investing is always about time, and the more time you have, the more risk can help you make money while you sleep. <br /><br />But that also means that we all need a certain amount of low risk. Even if you're younger, and you're mostly going for wealth boosting options like shares, a little bit of low risk investment rounds out your options to be better in the long term. <br /><br />And if you're older, you might need quite a few low risk investments.<br /><br />Lower risk means you don't make as much money over the long term – but they are dependable, and should keep a little trickle of money coming in even when the economy goes through a rough patch. <br /><br />One good option is bonds. <br /><br />For the latest Cooking the Books I talked to Mark Fowler from Hobson Wealth. <br /><br />We discussed what bonds are, how to use them as part of your overall investment strategy, and the rare times when bonds can be high risk. <br /><br />If you have a question about this podcast, or question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/" rel="noopener">https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/</a> Instagram here <a href="https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/" rel="noopener">https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/</a> and Twitter here <a href="https://twitter.com/FrancesCook" rel="noopener">https://twitter.com/FrancesCook</a>