NEW YORK (MONEY Magazine) - Sure, you still have to protect your savings from market downturns, which means that bonds, CDs and other fixed-income investments should remain a core part of your portfolio.

But you also need to keep your money growing, both to preserve your purchasing power over a superlong retirement and to create a financial cushion for anything from a medical emergency to helping the grandkids with tuition.

Dave and Ruth Frederickson (center, in white) expect to leave a legacy but also want to use their wealth to have fun with their family now.

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That means owning more stock throughout your retirement than financial advisers used to recommend.

How much stock? T. Rowe Price senior financial planner Christine Fahlund recommends having 40% to 60% of your portfolio in stocks or stock funds when you retire, then gradually decreasing the percentage and boosting bond holdings as you age. But, she suggests, keep 25% to 35% in stocks even in your eighties.

Dave and Ruth Frederickson, both 73, of Paradise Valley, Ariz., have worked hard at achieving that balance among growth, income and capital preservation.

Five years before Dave retired as CEO of a heavy-equipment dealership in 2000, he had about 75% of his savings in stocks and 25% in fixed-income investments. He began shifting out of equities and into bonds as he neared retirement, but he never gave up on growth altogether.

Today he still has about half of his retirement stash in stocks and stock funds, with the rest in bonds. Dave expects that he and Ruth will be able to live off the bond income and have the stocks as a reserve they can tap in an emergency or eventually leave to their kids.

Like spending, investing is a sensitive topic for adult children to broach with their parents, and vice versa. But a faulty investment strategy can have catastrophic consequences - after all, if you can't support yourself throughout retirement, chances are your children will have to pick up part of the slack.

At the least, poor investment choices can put the kibosh on plans to leave a nice inheritance for the younger generations in your family to enjoy. So it's imperative that you talk. Typically, the onus falls on adult children to initiate the conversation.

Start by mentioning to your parents that you need to know where their assets are in case anything happens to them. If they don't already have a list handy of their bank, mutual fund and brokerage accounts, offer to help them put one together. Then, in a series of conversations over time, you can ask questions about their investments to make sure they're properly diversified.

Have the talk soon - the earlier you're aware of problems, the more you can do to help your parents correct them.

For example, Richard Duff, owner of a commercial sign shop in Beltsville, Md., started talking about saving and investing with his parents when they were in their early fifties. He found they'd saved almost nothing for retirement.

So Richard persuaded his dad to max out his company retirement plan and encouraged both parents to fund IRAs that he opened for them. When his parents retired in the mid-1990s, Richard encouraged them to sell their house and invest the proceeds.

His efforts paid off.

His dad Wendell, 82, and mom Edith, 78, can now afford to live at Buckingham's Choice, a continuing-care community in Adamstown, Md., where Edith teaches line dancing and Wendell enjoys biking and swimming in the indoor pool.

"We're living the good life now," says Wendell. "But we couldn't have done it without Richard's help."

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