Before I can answer that, "sensible" is personal — it depends on your specific profile, not just your age. Let me give you the framework to work it out yourself.
[7] defines SAA as setting fixed proportions for asset classes based on risk tolerance, return expectations, and financial goals — then rebalancing to maintain them.
Age is a proxy for two things that actually matter:
| What age proxies for | The real question to ask |
|---|---|
| Time horizon | When do you need the money, and in what chunks? |
| Human capital remaining | How stable and large is your future earning capacity? |
[6] makes the key point: a stable, salaried income behaves like a bond. The larger your remaining earning years relative to your financial portfolio, the more equity risk your total wealth can actually bear.
[1] works through Kash, a 34-year-old software engineer:
His resulting allocation:
| Asset Class | Weight |
|---|---|
| Indian large-cap equity | 40% |
| Indian mid-cap equity | 20% |
| International equity | 15% |
| Gold (SGB — Sovereign Gold Bond — definition">SGBs) | 10% |
| Fixed income (G-Sec) | 15% |
Expected return ~11.2% nominal, Volatility — definition">volatility ~16.5%. [1]
Work through these in order:
Only after answering these should you set weights. [1]
Don't over-engineer the weights. Research shows that naïve equal-weight portfolios frequently beat precisely optimised ones out-of-sample because optimisation amplifies estimation errors. [2]
What genuinely matters:
- Include low-correlation assets (gold, international equity, fixed income) — this is where real diversification benefit comes from [2]
- Keep it simple enough that you will actually rebalance annually
- Use new SIP contributions to rebalance before selling anything — preserves tax efficiency [3]
Apply this → Go to Portfolio Builder and enter your current holdings. Map each position to an asset class and see where your actual allocation stands today — that gap is your first problem to solve.