You invest with a specific purpose, with many of them being time-based. At the same time, you have a certain comfort zone, meaning the extent of risks you cannot handle. Also, your age determines the extent of risk you can tolerate. In your younger days, you will have a higher risk appetite, driving you to equity investments. As you hit say 45, you will likely shift some of your equity investments to safer options such as FDs and debt funds. As you get the retirement corpus, which you would like to invest mainly in safe instruments, even if they yield less. Because at that time, you will likely have ZERO active income. So, you can set any of these as your investment objectives - Capital Appreciation Capital Preservation Income Generation Retirement Planning Emergency Fund Creation Wealth Accumulation Risk Management