The sales pitches say you'll be safely set for retirement - just trust us. But when it comes to the so-called target mutual funds - don't let anybody paint a target on your portfolio.

Investing for retirement income is a goal for everybody. Because whether you're a mogul or a working stiff - sooner or later - you're going to have to rely on your portfolio to pay you and your bills.

The key is that you have to keep putting cash aside and working to make sure that the cash is building up - rather than running down and out.

The common pitch out there in the investment world is that there should be different investment strategies for different types of investors. For the younger and just starting out - the idea is that they can accept lots of risk in their investments because if they lose lots of money they have time to make it back. Meanwhile, for the older investor - time is running out - so that they really shouldn't and can't afford to take a lot of risk when it comes to running their portfolio nest eggs.

This basic concept of taking risks when you're younger and easing up with safer investments when you're older has been a cornerstone with the brokerage and financial industries for generations.

And it also forms the underlying rules that financial industry regulators at least give lip service to when overseeing what's suitable for investment recommendations by brokers, other financial salesmen and even investment managers.

As a result, from stock picks and mutual fund brochures to television commercials, investment firms have pretty much followed this line of thought - not only to keep on the right side of regulators and litigators - but also to work towards attracting new customers both young and old, along with more of their hard earned cash.

For me, though, that's all pretty much bunk.

Ageless Portfolio Management Advice

Investing should never be about how much risk to take - or accept. Rather it should be how and where to put your money to work to build up what you have and eventually empower it to pay you when you need it.

Building a portfolio isn't just about putting cash down on a bet that the stock market or an individual stock or fund will go up in value. Instead, it should be about buying stocks, funds and bonds that are backed by solid, stress-tested, cash generating assets.

And in the process, it doesn't make any difference how your portfolio gains value - whether it's by having others bid up prices of assets you own, or instead because you keep stacking up the cash coming in from dividends. The important thing is that your portfolio is growing - and doing it month after month and year after year.

Think about it another way. What if you were about to take a new job offer and the company told you that you could be compensated in one of two ways.

The first would be that you would work and do good things for the company and sometime in the future you might get a nice reward.

The second would be that you again would do great work and along the way, the company would be more than happy to cut nice big checks to you.

Now most of us would and should go with the checks coming in. And while there's nothing wrong with some deferred compensation - my old adage that I've never met a man gone broke with regular checks coming in makes for good advice when looking at putting your portfolio to work for you.

Too many stocks and funds are really just IOUs for possible growth. You're supposed to put your money down in hopes that just maybe the S&P 500 will doing this, that or the other thing, rewarding you in the future. Hold and hope it will all be ok is pretty much the standard line out there in the mainstream investing market.

Instead, I insist that when I invest - and more so when I write about what you should invest in - the investment had better pay and pay really well and very regularly.

And that applies equally to the guy just out of college and beginning his investing career, as well as to the guy that's been working and investing all of his life and is ready for more golf and less work.

For if the young person just starting out puts his money to work in stocks, bonds and funds that pay him to own them, it's a lot more likely that he's going to be building up his portfolio than it he simply made some bets on higher market prices.

And for the guy that's depending on his portfolio to pay for his golf habit, owning stocks that pay him in cash is of course going to give him a whole lot more certainty that he'll have retirement income for years to come.

Target Funds: Hype Behind the Promise

But few investment advisors seem to get this concept, let alone put it to work in what they pitch for their customers. Instead, they've developed a new marketing scheme to peddle to the growing number of customers who have gotten more nervous about going along with the idea that betting on the S&P 500 will come through for them.

Target date mutual funds have been created and built by marketing departments of fund companies around the world. These funds that number about 236 in the US alone have been pitched with nice brochures and advertising that are supposed to lure in the investors that are beginning to lose the faith in hold and hope.

The idea is that you buy into - and pay the nice fees and commissions for - a fund that has the target date for your retirement. Retiring next year? There's a pile of 2010 dated funds out there.

A little longer before you scratch the itch to leave work? There are funds with - names that include dates running every so many years - from 2015 out to 2045 - that are ready to accept your hard earned cash.

And in their literature, you'll read all about how the fund management is based on the old ways of Wall Street. They'll supposedly grow their value in the early years by making prudent bets on stocks...and as they move along closer to their target dated years, they'll ease up and begin to hold less volatile assets.

The pitches are perfect: They get the younger folks excited about investing with the smart guys who will grow their wealth over the next few decades. And for the older folks - it will make it easier to sleep thinking that they won't have to work into and through their retirement years, because their target date mutual fund has it all fixed for them.

Sounds like a great deal, right?

So much so, that in recent years billions and billions of dollars piled into these funds that can be made up of individual securities - or, even better from the pitchmen's standpoint - other mutual funds that are run by the same companies running the target date funds.

Unfortunately, the performance hasn't lived up to the hype.

The real issue is that many of these funds - while losing less when the market goes south - still can cause a lot of havoc with retirement income and portfolios just when those investors need it most.

Losers

If you were to look at a host of these funds over the past year you'll find losses amounting to 20 to 30 percent over the last 12 months - and that's for the target date funds with 2015 on the labels.

And for many funds with target dates of next year - you'll see losses of 15 to 30 percent - or more.

This is why the guys up on Capitol Hill are getting angry calls from constituents saying that there ought to have been some regulation of these funds and their marketing pitches.

So, testimonies and depositions are getting scheduled with the fund managers and their executives, with the biggies of Vangard, Fidelity and American Funds - and plenty more - jetting into Washington.

But really, the fact is that everybody has to take more responsibility for their investments. You can't just go along with the usual stuff of Wall Street.

Buy and hope in the general stock market - or even some massaged general market funds - won't cut it for your retirement. If you were to take a look at some of the longer haul performances of some of these target dated investment funds, the general indexes will show that these funds still generate losses that are pretty much in line with the general stock market.

So dump the pitches, take the targets down off of the back of you and your portfolio, work on buying into stocks that really pay you and you'll be able to afford to enjoy more golf with less vitriol against your broker or mutual fund manager - unless he just made that great birdie on the last hole this afternoon.