Hi Jade
I’m only really a beginner here myself and certainly no expert. It’s really for each of us to derive an asset allocation that we feel comfortable with. If you have learnt more over the few years you have been investing and feel more comfortable then that’s great. What concerns me a little here is you mention you are a little risk averse but then want to try to ‘quicken’ things. I’m not sure things can be ‘quickened’ without veering off the indexing path and going down the stock picking route or let’s put everything on black in a casino! The simplicity and joy of the approach favoured on here is that in the long term reducing expenditure and investing in funds such as the LifeStrategy funds is highly likely to see us achieving our goals. However I appreciate you’re only referring to changing from 60% stocks to 70% here and nothing so dramatic.
With a time horizon of only 8 years a 60:40 allocation sounds fairly sensible to me but what is the purpose of this investment? Is it a pot that will be run down at which point another pot kicks in e.g. a SIPP? I’ve seen examples where a 60:40 allocation become 40:60 over this sort of timeframe. When someone has a single stash they tend to stick with their 70:30, 80:20 or whatever. Again I’m no expert here but I’ve seen examples posted of both approaches.
If the market fell 10%, 20%, 30% or 40% have you looked at how that would affect the LS60 versus the LS80? Would you be comfortable with that? Or at what point would you feel uncomfortable? There are many examples of people being 60, 70, or 80% stocks and they all seem to be reasonable and suit people’s requirements and attitude to risk.
My only other point (and I'm not sure of the forums opinion here, did I mention I’m not an expert!) but the VGLS funds on their own seem to be a great fund for the young and or anyone looking for simplicity. However at the point of drawing on the funds I tend to think it’s better to have 60% (or whatever) in the VGLS100 fund (or similar) and 40% in dedicated bond funds. That way you can draw on the bond specific part of your portfolio in the early years and leave your stocks alone. This is especially important if the market was to fall in your early years of drawing down. There may be people completely happy drawing down on the LS80 or 60 but I’m not sure I would be comfortable myself.
The JL Collins Stock Series, Monevator etc all have useful articles on asset allocation. It may be worth reading these if you haven’t already.
Good luck with your plans.