I’m taking you behind the scenes into our investment portfolio. I believe it’s important to learn from someone who’s done what you want to do, so it’s important that you know more about what we’ve done and are doing with our savings and investments. I want you to know you’re taking advice from someone who not only has the qualifications and real-world experience of working as a financial advisor but also has put into practice what I teach.

5 years ago I was just paying off my last bit of credit card debt. I had just started making good money and was able to start rapidly stacking cash and investing it.

First, we’ll look at our taxable accounts and then our retirement accounts. Everything combined we have just over $600k (about 30% in individual stocks and the rest in funds).

Here is a screenshot of our taxable accounts, the retirement accounts are shown in the full video. 

I typically recommend people start with 80% or more in index funds and then add about 20% in individual stocks- if you like stocks. I like to think of the stocks as the cherry to your Sundae. The ice cream is your funds and the stocks add that bit on top for extra growth potential without being so much that it puts your overall investment strategy at risk.  We have more in stocks because they have grown and now take up a larger portion of our portfolio. That is ok with us because we understand the risks associated and we aren’t depending on the money for anything specific.

5 years ago I wouldn’t have imagined our accounts would have grown so much- especially when you run numbers in those calculators it sometimes looks like it will take forever to get to a high account balance. One thing you have to remember when you start investing is that in the early stages of investing the majority of growth comes from your own deposits, later after you’ve been investing consistently over it me a shift happens and the majority of growth comes from the market. People want to see big returns right away and can get discouraged if that doesn’t happen. I want to encourage you to stick to an investment routine and keep going with it through good and bad times in the market.