<prompt> Human: One fundamental personal financeinvesting idea that I have learned through books Intelligent Investor has an entire chapter on it, classes most intro level finance classes, and apparent common knowledge is that it is better to have more risk in your investments when you are younger than when you are older. For example if you invest in a bad stock or bond when you are young and it blows up in your face you have plenty of time to remake that lost money. But when you are old you dont have that much time to remake that money. I want to know why my counter-argument is false or maybe im right. I think that the younger you are the investments you make have even more importance, because of the amount of time you can have your money tied up. So if you put in x amount of money now in a near zero-risk bond, over your life time you can make serious profit. But if you lose that money today you lose out on even more money in the future. This opportunity cost-ish idea leaves me to believe that you should have more freedom in your investments when you are older than when you are younger. Hope I asked the question clearly and hope my grammar isnt too bad ive been only speaking Chinese for the past month so my english is slipping.Thanks  <response>: I think your counterargument is confusing risk and volatility. We can put up with big volatility when we are young, in order to get bigger returns, because we typically wont be relying on retirement investments. Thus, the personal risk of volatile investments when we are young is low. 