Portfolio management is an important part of your life. Maybe more important than you realize. You have an overall portfolio that is made up of everything you own. Within that portfolio is your investment assets that you need to manage in order to reach your financial goals and have a healthy and wealthy egg-nest to enjoy in your golden retirement years.

Managing your financial portfolio is a lot like juggling. A young person, perhaps fresh out of college, might start by juggling small, similar-sized balls (which include a small income and a small debt). Over time, different things happen (perhaps that person buys a house or some stock) and suddenly objects of different size and weight are added to the mix.

Then, as life goes on, objects of increasing risk and danger might be added as well: a credit card… a high risk stock… a personal tragedy. They're not all bad (from a financial perspective) but they can hurt a person's financial portfolio if not handled right.

Portfolio management is the ongoing process of balancing (or juggling!) your personal assets in order to meet your personal goals and expectations and, as much as possible, increase returns while minimizing risk.

Here are 10 simple tips to ensure that your overall portfolio is in good shape…

Strategy 1 : Understand your financial needs. Knowing Thy Self is the first step to creating and managing a portfolio that will do what you want it to do. This knowledge will help you set realistic future financial goals and decide how much risk to include in your investment strategy.

Strategy 2 : Have a financial plan. Adhere to it and your egg-nest will grow steadily and abundantly.

Strategy 3 : Pay down your non-income generating debts. This kind of debt is what we call "Bad Debt", which will not able to provide you with monetary returns. Some examples include your home mortgages, car financing etc

Strategy 4 : Build a good credit rating. A good credit reputation makes banks more willing to lend you money during raining days or when investment opportunities strike.

Strategy 5 : Work toward buying a home instead of renting. This is of course assuming that the cost of house ownership is lower than the overall rental cost.

Strategy 6 : Reduce your depreciating assets and increase your appreciating assets. Imagine your investment property is worth twice as compared to the time you bought it 5 years ago ? You can then ask your bank to increase your mortgage amount and use the additional funds to finance another investment property with no money down !

Strategy 7 : Make sure you have adequate insurance coverage for a variety of worst-case scenarios. Golden rule is "Always save for the rainy days"

Strategy 8 : Be aware of the risks and rewards of each type of investment. One great strategy is to diversify across and within your asset classes to minimize risk that is only specific to a particular asset

Strategy 9 : Be familiar with investments in general. Gaining knowledge makes you nimble to capitalize on good investment opportunities when they come by.

Strategy 10 : Maintain a budget… Stick to it and sleep soundly at night !

Simply keep in mind the above strategies in portfolio management. I trust you will find abundance of fulfilments and satisfaction in working towards building a profitable egg-nest full of well-balanced assets.