Cash

At just a percent and a half, this is a significantly lower amount of cash than you would see in my portfolio compared to if I had pulled the numbers on December 31, 2024 like I usually do for end-of-year portfolio breakdowns, instead of January 6, 2025 like I did for this one. I did this intentionally because I didn’t want to make it seem like I hold onto more cash than I actually do.

I have a lot of cash in my savings account and settlement funds on December 31 because I have it ready to go for when contribution limits for tax-advantaged accounts (e.g., Roth/Traditional IRAs, SEP-IRA, HSA, etc.) reset on the 1st of the calendar year; a few days into the year, I’ve invested it all via those aforementioned accounts and have minimal cash left.

I am mostly a believer of maximizing your gains by way of maximizing the amount of time you are in the market, so on an ongoing basis, I only hold onto about 6 months’ worth of core living expenses as an emergency fund, then put the rest in investments as soon as possible. The way I hold this cash has not changed since last year—I use a Discover Bank savings account as my main bank account, then keep my settlement funds in the Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX) on Vanguard and the Fidelity Gov­ern­ment Money Market Fund (SPAXX) on Fidelity.

Domestic broad market index funds

As you might have expected, domestic broad market index funds account for the largest portion of my portfolio, and was also the category into which I invested the most new money in 2024 alongside international broad market index funds. Even though I like exploring fun new investment opportunities and partaking in risky new ventures once in a while, an overwhelming majority of my portfolio is in safe investments.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I opted to buy Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index Fund Admiral Shares (VHYAX) because it seemed to historically tend to be safer during times of high turmoil and instability, but now I’m back to buying almost exclusively Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX) in this category. Ratio-wise as of right now, for every ~$3 I have invested in VHYAX, I have ~$7 invested in VTSAX.

For money I have in Fidelity for my Health Savings Account and Fidelity Charitable account, my broad market index fund of choice is the Fidelity ZERO Total Market Index Fund (FZROX).

International broad market index funds

Two years ago, I ended up selling a very large portion of my exposure to international broad market index funds by way of Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTIAX) for tax-loss-harvesting purposes. After waiting out the appropriate wash sale period, I started buying back into international broad market index funds to re-diversify my portfolio.

Along with domestic broad market index funds, this was the category in which I invested the most new money in 2024. My fund of choice throughout 2024 was the Fidelity ZERO International Index Fund (FZILX).

This allocation percentage is better than last year, but I still think it’s a little bit low; this will continue to be the category into which I invest the most throughout 2025.

Bonds

During the pandemic, I purchased Series I Savings Bonds from the United States Department of the Treasury due to their very high inflation-tracked interest rates. Since then, I’ve sort of just let them sit in my TreasuryDirect account to accrue interest and haven’t really given them much attention. Beyond that, everything else lumped into this category that isn’t with the Treasury is in Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VBTLX).

I’m still young and I have decently high risk tolerance, so I’m probably not going to be buying any more bonds outright. However, it still acts as a form of portfolio diversification and stability, so I likely won’t actively sell and reallocate this money anytime soon either.

Target date funds

I split my target date funds into their own separate category because their compositions change depending on the current year. Target date funds are intended to be a hands-off investment fund where you pick one with the closest year available to the date you anticipate on retiring, and the fund will automatically adjust risk to minimize the likelihood of you losing a substantial amount of money close to retirement due to market volatility.

I use target date funds in my tax-advantaged retirement accounts because it’s a way for me to further diversify my portfolio, but from a different angle: in the extremely unlikely but non-zero chance that I become completely unable to manage my own investments in the future, presumably through some unpredictable severe mental and/or physical incapacitation, and if my caretaker ends up being someone who is financially illiterate, then at least the money in my retirement accounts will remain steady, even if the markets fall into mass turmoil right before I reach 59½ years old. Of course, this only applies to my retirement accounts; I personally self-manage all my other assets everywhere else.

Right now, most of this is split across the Vanguard Target Retirement 2060 Fund (VTTSX), Vanguard Target Retirement 2055 Fund (VFFVX), and Van­guard Target Retirement 2050 Fund (VFIFX). As you can see by the names of the funds, I have it split across three different target years. This is because I am doing far better financially than I had ever imagined I would be when I was in my 20s, and I am foreseeing an earlier and earlier retirement year as I get older, so I shifted from buying the 2060 fund to the 2055 fund and now the 2050 fund. I plan on continuing to buy more into 2050, while leaving my 2060/2055 allocation alone, and not touching a 2045 fund due to it being too soon to make sense for the purposes of a government-regulated retirement account.

According to Vanguard’s website, as of December 31, 2024, my target funds are roughly distributed as 55% domestic total market index funds, 35% international total market index funds, 7% domestic total market bonds, and 3% international total market bonds.

Real estate investment trusts (REITs)

There haven’t really been any interesting developments on the real estate side of my portfolio. All my real estate exposure is still held via Van­guard Real Es­tate Index Fund Admiral Shares (VGSLX).

I don’t really use social media anymore, but that doesn’t make me immune to doom scrolling—I’ve caught myself losing track of time and getting sucked into Zillow on several occasions. I think that’s productive though, as it means I’ve been looking for good real estate purchase opportunities and keeping tabs on the state of the real estate market in general.

I will likely end up selling my allocation in this category to use as a down payment if I end up purchasing a property (which will also help me do some tax loss harvesting, as this REIT hasn’t been performing too well), but until then, I don’t think I will be taking great initiative or otherwise doing anything majorly proactive in the foreseeable future when it comes to real estate.

Individual stocks and private companies

In 2024, all of my tax loss harvesting came out of this category. I sold my down positions in Stellantis, N.V. (STLA), Cloudflare (NET), and Under Armour (UAA). Keep in mind that this does not mean I’ve lost faith in these companies; it just means the timing was right for me to use these companies’ stock for tax benefits. Ram still makes my favorite pickup trucks, and Cloudflare still has a huge part in allowing you to read this very page on my website.

I’m still holding onto stock in Marriott International, Inc. (MAR), T-Mobile US, Inc. (TMUS), and TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (TKO). Comically, I am also still holding onto my single share of Nxu, Inc. (NXU), which is down to about one-tenth of one percent of what I bought in at when they were still Atlis Motor Vehicles, Inc. I guess leaving it in my brokerage account acts as a continued reminder of the risks of investing in individual securities. And of course, I still have my unsponsored American depository receipts of Nexon Co., Ltd. (NEXOY); you can read the silly story behind that one in my previous investment breakdown.

As a side note, in case it was not clear already, I am not including my equity ownership of AVY Entertainment, Inc., d.b.a. Tempo in this portfolio breakdown, not only because I own a combination of stock options and common stock (and no preferred stock) so it would be tricky to pinpoint a proper valuation on it anyway, but also because it would greatly skew the percentages in the breakdown. As a consolation prize, I present to you a fun fact: later in 2025, I will be celebrating my ten-year anniversary working at Tempo.

Cryptocurrency

What originally started as my “gambling fund” ended up becoming a significant component of my investment portfolio. I first bought into cryptocurrency as a way to learn about it hands-on, only putting in money I was okay with losing entirely. Since then, and especially over the past two years, cryptocurrency has spiked substantially in value such that it had the biggest increase in my portfolio allocation percentage, even with me barely buying any more of it.

Although I have some cryptocurrency in a self-custodied hardware wallet, I actually have a substantial part of my cryptocurrency exposure via funds with my brokerage. Namely, I have varying amounts of shares of the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC), Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF (BTC), Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW), and ProShares Bitcoin ETF (BITO). As you can see, my collection of funds is fairly diverse, ranging from broad market funds to Bitcoin to Bitcoin futures. An overwhelming majority of these have just been positions I’ve sat on for years, and will continue to sit on for the foreseeable future as a form of portfolio diversification.

A question I get asked occasionally is why I don’t just convert all of my holdings into actual cryptocurrency held in my hardware wallet. I have two major reasons: The first is that selling shares of these funds to use the proceeds to purchase actual cryptocurrency would trigger a capital gains taxable event, and I would like to postpone that to a point in the future that could potentially be more tax-favorable to me. The second is that knowing how to manage hardware wallets is not quite mainstream yet, so in the extremely unlikely but non-zero chance that I suddenly die and my assets get passed on to my beneficiaries, I don’t want to burden them with having a substantial amount of money mysteriously locked behind what appears to be a USB drive.

International currency

This is a new investment category as of 2024, inspired by a handful of people recommending that I look into expanding my international exposure not only by purchasing more broad market index funds, but also by buying currency funds. I’m still not too knowledgeable about international matters, but I figured that, if I’m going to invest so much into cryptocurrency, I might as well also invest in foreign currency.

After a (somewhat brief) session of research, I decided on purchasing shares of the Invesco CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE) and Invesco CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY). As of today, Invesco also has ETFs for the Australian dollar, British pound sterling, Canadian dollar, and Swiss franc; I may look into buying some shares of those in the near future as well.

Precious metals

I bought shares of Fidelity Select Gold Portfolio (FSAGX) during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to get gold exposure without physically purchasing and storing gold bars in my closet. Since then, I’ve been fairly uninterested in diving deeper in this area, so it has just existed in my Fidelity account without receiving any of my attention.

Fine art, and other collectibles

A few years ago, I participated in StartEngine Collectibles Fund I, LLC’s Regulation A+ as a unique way to get exposure to the fine art and collectibles market without having to physically buy and store any of it myself.

Since then, StartEngine has been horrible to work with. They refunded portions of my investment money, presumably because they did not meet minimum funding goals for certain items, but they did so without ever communicating anything about it (and still have not to this day), so as far as I’m aware, it could’ve basically been that I just inadvertently gave them thousands of dollars as a free loan.

I saw that they had a secondary market open on their platform, so I’m wondering if I can just dump this at-cost and be done with it, but this is such an insignificantly small amount of money that I have not been motivated to do anything about it yet.