<prompt> Human: Im extremely risk-averse. Might have something to do with the fact that I started investing in July of 2008 and saw my initial contributions decline by about 50-60 percent in the first 6-8 months. I went 100 to stable value in December of 2008 and never re-allocated. All of my personal investments are also just stashed in a savings account not a whole lot there, anyway.How crazy is this in general on like a 1-10 scale?Assistant: This would be more appropriate to someone approaching retirement.At age 26 you have 40 years of investing ahead of you. Plenty of time to take a few lumps and recover.If you invest at less than market returns or potentially less than inflation you are going to minimize your retirement income.Human: How would you allocate as far as stocksbondsmoney marketstable value for a very risk averse 26 year-old such as myself? Assistant: Age in bonds, rest in stocks is conservative. I go by Age - 10 in bonds and some even go by Age - 20 in bonds.So go 25 bonds 75 stocksTotal Bond Market Index or Intermediate Term BondsTotal Stock Market Index. You can throw in some international stocks too if you want to diversify further.Human: I would literally tear all of the hear out of my fucking scalp if I had 75 of my money in stocks, lol. I dont know how people can put up with the huge fluctuations. I think the max I could have in stocks or a stock fund would be about 10-20  <response>: I dont know how people can put up with the huge fluctuations.Simple, dont look at the balance of your retirement accounts on a day to day or really even month to month basis. That number is meaningless, since you arent going to be accessing that money for 30 years. 