This rapid aging process will pose distinct demographical challenges on many parts of the society, including, the financial management of retirement. This paper is intended to study the impact of non-finance characteristics, such as age, gender, educational level, ethnic group, personality, marital status, and dependents, and finance characteristics, such as, income, wealth and financial knowledge, on the risk tolerance for older urban Chinese in Malaysia. The news of retirees using up all their retirement funds after only a few years from their retirement is quite common. Knowing who are the risk takers and non risk takers is essential, especially for financial planners. Taking on too much financial risk might jeopardize wealth preservation while taking on too little financial risk might jeopardize the attainment of retirement funds. The results of this study show that risk tolerance is high for men, those with above secondary education and those with better financial knowledge.