Heuristic portfolio rules with labor income

We propose a heuristic portfolio rule, which significantly simplifies individuals' asset allocation decisions over the life cycle. Under this heuristic, equity exposure is a linear function of the individual's labor-to-wealth ratio and age. When individuals follow our heuristic, welfare gains when switching to the optimal policy are only 0.35% of lifetime consumption (around USD 9,800). Relative to portfolio strategies used by individuals in the data, welfare gains from using our heuristic are about 2.2% (around USD 61,600). Our results are robust to different educational attainments and family structures.