Investing term
What is Glide path?
A planned shift in allocation over time — typically moving from stocks toward bonds as retirement approaches.
A glide path is a planned, gradual shift in your asset mix over time — typically moving from mostly stocks toward more bonds as a goal like retirement approaches. Rather than a single fixed allocation, it's a schedule that automatically dials down risk as your time horizon shortens.
The logic is that a market crash hurts far more when it strikes near your goal, with little time to recover, than when it strikes decades out. By de-risking steadily as the finish line nears, a glide path reduces the chance that a badly timed downturn derails you. Target-date funds follow a built-in glide path on your behalf, adjusting the mix automatically each year.
A glide path steadily shifts from stocks toward bonds as retirement approaches — 90% stocks at 30, 40% at 65 — so a crash near the finish line does less damage.
For example
A glide path might hold 90% stocks at age 30, drift to 60% by 55, and reach 40% at retirement — de-risking as the finish line nears.
Learn it by doing
That's Glide path in theory — it clicks when you use it. Practise it hands-on in a free, interactive lesson (Stage 3, Know Yourself: Risk Tolerance & Time Horizons).
Try the free lesson →Why it matters to you
A glide path matters because it hard-wires a sensible principle — take more risk when you have time to recover, less when you don't — into an automatic schedule you can't forget or fumble in a panic. It's the core mechanism behind target-date funds, which let someone invest sensibly for decades with a single fund. It also directly addresses sequence-of-returns risk by shrinking stock exposure just as a late crash would do the most damage.
⚠ De-risking too much, too soon
A glide path can also err the other way — moving to bonds so aggressively that a still-long horizon loses out on growth it needed. Retirement can last decades, so even at 65 some stock exposure usually makes sense. Check that a target-date fund's glide path isn't more conservative than your own horizon and goals warrant.