What percent of my portfolio should in invested in my retirement?

[feh]

Emphasis on the word "old". As you indicated, it is based strictly on historical data and doesn't factor in any of the well-understood, durable changes in the marketplace, nor factors in how now new-but-long-standing monetary policy, such as qualitative easing, renders reliance strictly on historical data invalid. For more accurate insights into this decision, it is necessary to rely on data that resembles today's environment closely. In considering the impact of an allocation toward bonds in your portfolio, it is essential to understand that allocation in the context of today's market, not that of last decade or the decade before. Specifically, you need to go back to 1950 to see the impact on bonds (and from that intuit the impact on bond funds) over the next twenty or thirty years.

For folks age 30, it may not matter. So much will change between "now and then" that we really have no idea what to do, except that we know that historical approaches no longer have validity. For folks nearing retirement, we know that the old yarns like "100 minus your age" are invalid, and that the insights from the bond market of the 1950s will better inform us about the bond market of the 2020s.

Most independent experts today are aiming folks in their 50s to asset allocations that include at least 70% equities, and in many cases keeping equities around 80% through the first decade of retirement. Remember: Unlike in the past, where the average person lived about ten years into retirement, many of us can expect to live four times as long in retirement, so while a part of your retirement savings are intended for relatively short-term use (i.e., over the next ten or fifteen years), a large portion of your retirement savings, when you enter retirement, is intended to be used thirty years hence.

Well stated, and I agree. A new version of this rule might be 120-age in equities. Some economists are recommending 100% equities until age 50. It really depends on many individual factors.

[rennigade]

Im 30 years old. My portfolio is...

64.49% in retirement
11.50% in other investment accounts (mutual funds, stocks, bonds)
24.01% in cash