Investment allocation breakdown for 2022 Q2, comprehensive edition

July 1, 2022, 6:32 AM by Parkzer • Best of the Best, DougDoug, Finance

Disclaimer: I am not a registered investment advisor, nor do I have the proper qualifications to become one. The information contained in this blog post is intended to be strictly anecdotal as a means of personal storytelling, and it should not be construed as financial advice. Everyone’s situation is uniquely different, so do not blindly copy my strategy; instead, consult with a certified professional if you have any questions or need proper guidance.

After doing these investment breakdowns quarterly for over a year now, and each quarter, building upon the previous quarter’s breakdown, I realized that it’s not very realistic to ask people to go down the entire rabbit hole of all of my past investment allocation breakdowns in order to understand the full context of anything new that I’m sharing. Because of this, I have decided to do a “comprehensive edition” of my investment breakdown at least once a year in order to “reset” the trail of breadcrumbs and provide a new standalone anchor point from which readers can start.

Because of this, this particular comprehensive edition of 2022 Q2’s investment allocation breakdown is going to be a lot more detailed and will contain lots of repeated information from previous posts—which is the entire idea here, as the main point of me doing this is to be able to compact everything important into a single article so readers won’t have to navigate back in time.

Now, with that having been just said, I think this may seem pretty silly, but I direct you to a blog post that I published in the past titled “Investing US$10,000.00 in the stock market – Parkzer vs. DougDoug’s Twitch chat.” In that post, I discuss my current outlook on the market; it will give a general explanation as to why I seem to be so focused lately (within the past half a year or so) with portfolio diversification and alternative investment classes.

Cash I subscribe to many safe-investing principles, including the idea that time in the market is better than timing the market, and how you should always hold minimal cash—only enough to cover your emergency fund. If anything makes you heed my disclaimer above about how I’m not an investment advisor, it should be this—I am at an all-time high in cash holdings, and I am being a hypocrite and not following my own advice. I didn’t recently sell investments in preparation for making a major purchase or anything—I just don’t feel comfortable dumping a bunch of money into the stock market right now until I see some modicum of stability return to the charts. I am losing a substantial amount of value from my money due to high inflation by just holding it in cash, but that is a trade-off I’m wiling to accept to avoid losing even more to a crashing market. My bank account of choice is the Discover Online Savings Account. I’ve been a Discover customer ever since I was 18 years old and got my first credit card; Discover has always been reliable for me, and because it is an online bank, even though the interest rate on the savings account is tiny, it is still astronomical compared to traditional brick-and-mortar banks that may offer less than a tenth (or even a hundredth) of a percentage point.	27.19%
Domestic broad market index funds For the money that I do still have in the stock market, a large portion of it is in domestic broad market index funds, namely Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX) and Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index Fund Admiral Shares (VHYAX). I use Vanguard as my primary brokerage, but I also have a Fidelity account for account types that Vanguard doesn’t offer—namely a Health Savings Account and a regular brokerage account that supports incoming transactions of over-the-counter securities (which Vanguard recently stopped supporting in late April) (I also hold my 529 College Savings Plan with Fidelity because the sign-up process was much easier than Vanguard’s). Within my Fidelity HSA, I hold my money in the form of the Fidelity ZERO® Total Market Index Fund (FZROX). Although I’m hesitant in current market conditions, domestic broad market index funds are my favorite category of investment. Each calendar year when limits reset, I max out my tax-advantaged accounts, and all other investments into the stock market generally go into brokerage accounts in the form of broad market index funds.	17.84%
International total market index funds For the purpose of diversifying outside of the United States of America, I also own Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTIAX). I don’t know much about countries outside the United States, and I am probably grossly uneducated about international matters, but I know for a fact that the United States is not the only successful country in the world, and I want to make sure that I have exposure to outside markets in case something horrible happens to the United States and/or something incredible happens to a foreign country. Beyond that, I don’t really have much further insight here; I just picked out a broad market index fund specifically focusing on non-US companies (as opposed to worldwide index funds) such that I don’t have any overlap with domestic index funds I already own, and can control and proportion my exposure to global markets.	5.29%
Target date funds In my retirement accounts, specifically my Roth IRA and SEP-IRA, I like to purchase target-date broad-market index funds. Specifically, I have my money split fairly evenly between Vanguard Target Retirement 2055 Fund (VFFVX) and Vanguard Target Retirement 2060 Fund (VTTSX). The premise of a target date fund is to pick out a year in the future for when you think you are going to need to start making withdrawals, and the index fund manager automatically adjusts the holdings of the fund to optimize growth up until that point. For example, if you are expecting to retire in 2060, these funds will invest heavily in high-risk, high-return stocks for now, but as it gets closer to 2060, the fund will progressively shift holdings into low-risk, low-return bonds such that your money won’t suddenly plummet if a stock market crash were to happen close to your retirement year when you need to start making withdrawals. Due to annual contribution limits set by the government on these tax-advantaged retirement accounts, a majority of my investments are in regular brokerage accounts. Thus, by putting all my tax-advantaged retirement savings into target date funds, I’m only putting a relatively small percentage of my investment into these automatically-adjusting portfolios, and I am manually managing everything else outside of these retirement accounts. A reasonable question I often get is why I don’t manually self-manage all of my investments (including retirement savings), instead of entrusting my IRA contributions to Vanguard’s fund manager, considering how involved I already am with investing and wealth management. The main reason is so it can act as a safeguard in case something happens to me in the future where I am no longer able to actively manage my own money. Of course, I imagine that the likelihood of that actually happening (and then my caretaker also not being able to actively manage my money) is inconceivably low. However, for my personal risk tolerance, I feel like I already have plenty of other investments such that I’m willing to sacrifice a bit of money on an automatically-managed target date fund with a slightly higher expense ratio so it acts like a makeshift insurance policy for my retirement, in case the market crashes right when I need the money. As a side note, I also recently started taking advantage of another tax-advantaged account, the UNIQUE 529 College Investing Plan. I set one up with Fidelity, and again, for the sake of convenience, and because of how small of a fraction of my total portfolio this accounts for, I was comfortable just putting the money into a target date fund. Based on the fact that I may use this money myself for further education (as opposed to passing it onto my children), Fidelity selected the NH College Portfolio (Fidelity Index) as my fund.	20.53%
Real estate investment trusts (REITs) If you ask people how to best diversify your investment portfolio, the go-to answer from most people is usually going to be real estate. Unfortunately, traditional real estate has a relatively high barrier of entry—not only do you have to go out and find a physical property at a reasonable price with good potential for positive cash flow, but you also need to put a chunk of capital down to purchase the property, even if you’re loaning money from a lender. Luckily, there are some alternatives for real estate investment that don’t involve purchasing an actual building, facility, or plot of land. The real estate investment trust is an investment vehicle that allows you to invest in a company that, to put it simply, acts like a landlord on your behalf and shares their real estate profits with you. A vast majority of taxable revenue from income-driving activities, such as collecting rent payments from leasees, are distributed to REIT shareholders in the form of dividends. Because I personally am not at a point where I feel ready to commit to purchasing physical real estate, 100% of my real estate investment exposure is through Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund Admiral Shares (VGSLX).	11.72%
Bonds I have been relatively fickle with bond holdings because of how young I am and how much opportunity cost there is to investing in bonds instead of in stocks, considering the amount of runway I have prior to needing to withdraw from my investments. With that being said, upon the full onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the relief efforts the United States government took to print an absurd amount of money out of nowhere, it was fairly obvious that inflation was going to skyrocket. This was less well-known before, but I’m glad that this information is much more commonplace now—the United States Department of the Treasury offers a special bond called the Series I Savings Bonds that acts as a hedge against inflation. As of this writing, the interest rate on these bonds is 9.62%, which is earth-shatteringly high considering that many people are losing double-digit percentages on their portfolios by investing their money elsewhere. An overwhelming majority of my bond holdings are in the form of Series I Savings Bonds. It’s a great way for me to retain as much of my money’s existing value as possible for now, and then once the market stabilizes, I can sell the bonds and reallocate them back into higher-risk stocks.	6.77%
Cryptocurrency I started investing in cryptocurrency primarily as a way to diversify my portfolio, but part of my interest also came from the fact that I saw many other people getting rich off buying into cryptocurrency early, and I wanted to join in on the gamble. Tempo Games is going to be integrating blockchain technology into one of its upcoming game releases. Even though I oversee corporate operations and am not directly involved in game design or technical engineering, I still felt like it would be important for me to be familiar with the concept. One of the best ways to learn is to accrue experience through first-hand, hands-on exposure and experimentation, so I have been making active cryptocurrency investments a lot more in the past few years. I own a decent chunk of Bitcoin and a little bit of Dogecoin and Shiba Inu token, but a majority of my holdings are actually in the form of the Grayscale® Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC) and the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW). These are over-the-counter securities that represent underlying cryptocurrency holdings held by the firms and packaged into a single share, the convenience of which is paid for via a 2.5% annual management fee. There are three distinct reasons why I own most of my cryptocurrency in this form: This is less applicable now, but when I first started purchasing cryptocurrency, I was not confident in my ability to manage my own wallet, and I had a mild concern that I would make a mistake that could render all my cryptocurrency useless or gone. At various times throughout the life of these funds, the market price per share was lower than the actual value of the underlying holdings. For example, on December 31, 2021, GDLC was trading OTC at US$24.25, but the cryptocurrency that each share represented was valued at US$32.18, which means I got a nearly 25% discount on the cryptocurrency I purchased that day. If there were to be a situation where I suddenly die, my estate would then be distributed amongst my survivors. Because I have no spouse and no children, my parents are next in line to receive my assets. Considering my past experiences with watching them try to use emerging technology, I do not want tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of my assets to be locked behind a mobile app that they are going to have to figure out how to swap for United States dollars through a cryptocurrency exchange.	2.87%
Individual stocks and private companies I went through a phase when I was younger when I was very interested in researching companies and picking out stocks. In the past few years, I was also a participant of the retail investor movement and buying meme stocks. Since then, I’ve waned down my individual company holdings substantially, and instead just stick with companies that are meaningful to me. I own Marriott International, Inc. (MAR) because they have functionally been my landlord for over a year now after I transferred out the lease to my condo in Las Vegas and traveled across the United States and Canada. I am an Ambassador Elite in their loyalty program, which is the highest tier achievable through their Bonvoy system; throughout this incredible volume of travel, as well as additional research I’ve done on other hotel chains, I believe Marriott takes the best approach to lodging out of all the major brands. I also own Cloudflare, Inc. (NET) and T-Mobile US, Inc. (TMUS) because they are two of my favorite companies to work with. I use almost all of Cloudflare’s available services to support my website, and also used them for Tempo’s corporate needs as well, up until we hired a new IT team and they took over that aspect of the company. I’ve been with T-Mobile ever since I left my parents’ AT&T family plan. I have never faced a single problem with either of these companies. In my opinion, both of these companies take an uncommon approach to business, in that they prioritize quality products and high customer satisfaction above anything else, and depend on those two aspects to naturally improve cash flow. Finally, I purchased a nice batch of Stellantis, NV (STLA), the company behind my favorite auto brand and pickup truck, the Ram 1500 Rebel, as well as some other auto companies I’m a fan of, like Alfa Romeo, Maserati, and Jeep. Stellantis has shown great acumen towards advancing vehicle technology and implementing it in previously unestablished ways. I’m looking forward to seeing the Ram all-electric pickup truck, and there is a high chance that it is the next pickup truck that I’m going to end up purchasing. Note that my holdings for the $10,000 investing challenge with DougDoug are not included in this line item (or in this investment allocation percentage breakdown at all), as I consider that more of a special project, and also want to avoid people trying to reverse engineer numbers to calculate my net worth. Instead, I have a brief section about the investment challenge at the end of this blog post.	4.71%
Precious metals As a way to even further diversify my portfolio, I took the recently-falling stock market trend as an opportunity to buy into some gold. I’m not really in a position right now to purchase solid gold bars and store them safely with me as a physical hedge against the market, but I found the Fidelity® Select Gold Portfolio (FSAGX) that I can buy from my existing Fidelity brokerage account, which comes close enough. One thing to note here is that I’m not investing in gold because I’m particularly passionate about it or know what I’m doing; this is mostly a “why not” scenario where I am putting in a tiny fraction of my portfolio into something that I’ve always heard could be useful to have during market turbulence.	1.20%
Fine art, and other collectibles And finally, as a way to really diversify my portfolio, I began investing in fine art and other collectibles this quarter, and will continue doing so in increments in the future. There were three factors that set me over the “tipping point” to begin investing in fine art: I always knew that fine art was something that only rich people invested in, and because of how I believe in the concept of “the rich get richer” (i.e., don’t work for your money, make your money work for you), I wanted to get in on this investment vehicle. With how “abstract” money has felt in the past few years, primarily caused by the United States government just printing a ton of money out of nowhere during the pandemic and making me question the core principle of the value of money (and, to some extent, how a radical move by the government could theoretically bring the value of my paper money down to zero), I realized that possessing “stuff” is more useful in the long-run than hoarding dollars. Although I can’t outright purchase fine art at my current level of wealth, I found StartEngine Collectibles Fund I, LLC’s Regulation A+, in which StartEngine has securitized fine art and is selling them as shares. This massively lowers the barrier of entry into fine art investing, even if the fees are fairly high. (To be clear, this is not a paid endorsement, which is why I linked to the SEC filing instead of their website; if you’re also interested in this type of investment, you should do your own research and consider all the options, rather than just blindly using the same company I did.)	1.88%

As promised, to wrap up, here is a breakdown of how my $10,000 stock investing challenge with Doug Wreden is going:

My portfolio is weathering the stock market decline relatively well with a balance of $9,137.88, managing not only to beat Doug and his Twitch chat’s portfolio, but also the S&P 500 and even the bond market. Doug’s portfolio is at $7,944.67, rapidly re-approaching its all-time low. However, if it’s any consolation, I guess he and his community can at least be happy that they didn’t go all-in on cryptocurrency, which would be down to $3,805.97 by now.

I’ve secretly been tweeting for the past year and a half

June 2, 2022, 12:03 AM by Parkzer • Best of the Best

I’ve never really been a fan of social media. I used Facebook a lot during my early years of high school, but I’ve never really found the concept of social media that compelling—the entire premise just felt to me like it would be a great way to have a bad time. I severely waned down my Twitter usage years ago, and a little over one year ago, I pinned a tweet on my profile implicitly announcing my departure from the platform.

Well, I have more than one Twitter account. I have an alternate profile—one that I only let four of my friends follow. I thought it would be a convenient way to collect some of my short thoughts and funny moments that weren’t deep enough to warrant an entire blog post.

Today, I noticed that I had been selected as an early participant in the Twitter Circle early rollout and testing phase. This feature can functionally serve the same purpose as having an alternate account, so I made the decision to stop using my alt and go back to using my main, but only tweeting to my Circle.

As part of this transition, I decided to aggregate and share some of my better tweets from my alt account before I retire it (though I would un-retire it if Twitter decides to discontinue Circle at any point).

One of these days, I will stop misspelling “canker sore” as “cancer sore”

September 24, 2020

I spent literally like an hour and a half today trying to figure out the optimal food to eat when suffering from debilitating aphthous ulcer pain

… and then I just got a burger anyway

September 25, 2020

I am happy to announce that the canker sore is beginning to heal, and the pain has subsided enough that it doesn’t feel like I’m committing suicide every time I chew

September 27, 2020

Time to get in my gym sessions before January 1 when it gets flooded with new year’s resolution people

Paradise, NV
December 27, 2020

In today’s episode of “Chase Fraud Protection is useless,” let’s see if Chase can redeem itself from its 0% success rate in catching fraudulent transactions

Oh no, someone is spending $9 on your card at McDonald’s; block it!

Oops, that’s just Adam getting dinner

Still 0%

Los Angeles, CA
January 26, 2021

I am imagining a scenario where somebody purposely types something wrong, adds “that is a typo” after it, but typos and accidentally writes “that is not a typo” instead

I cannot stop laughing

Why am I like this

March 15, 2021

I have a paper cut under my fingernail

Except worse

Because the cut was caused by one of those sturdy plastic Pokémon card sleeves, so it’s thicker than normal paper cuts, and now it feels like the tip of my finger is going to fall off

April 20, 2021

omg this cut healed a couple days ago and then I got another one on the same finger on my opposite hand

April 27, 2021

Upside of parking under a tree: Less cabin overheating by avoiding direct sunlight in 105°F+ weather

Downside of parking under a tree: Every other bird in Utah insists my truck is their bathroom

St. George, UT
June 19, 2021

I drove past a used car dealership in the middle of nowhere in Missouri today and they had like 30 vehicles on the lot

Literally every single one of them was a pickup truck

Springfield, IL
July 10, 2021

I’ve made my way into the Eastern time zone, but kept my computer on Pacific time to keep things easier for work

I keep looking at the clock and thinking “wow, it’s not even noon and I’ve finished so much work today”

Then I remember it’s actually almost 3 PM

Indianapolis, IN
September 2, 2021

One of my favorite things to do at the airport is to sneak up behind people wearing their mask on their chin when they’re clearly not eating or drinking, and start coughing

Atlanta, GA
October 15, 2021

I got two free water bottles after checking into my hotel a few hours ago

I decided to bring one to the gym, but realized I misplaced them

I spent 2 min searching a tiny hotel room

Then I remembered that I put them in a spot so reasonable that I forgot where

The refrigerator

Albuquerque, NM
November 22, 2021

I’m so good at accidentally kicking things that at this point I’m pretty sure my brain just doesn’t know how big my feet are

Enterprise, NV
December 9, 2021

This is the second time in a row I’m eating sushi with my fingers because I forgot to check the stupid box to request utensils from the restaurant with my order

Loveland, CO
March 21, 2022

I just got attacked by violent, rampant, vicious tumbleweed in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming

I am literally not joking and not exaggerating

Gillette, WY
April 17, 2022

The amount that it rains in the Seattle area should be considered cruel and unusual punishment

Issaquah, WA
May 21, 2022

The person sitting next to me on this plane is nodding off so violently that I confused her for the guitarist of a heavy metal band

May 23, 2022

Great news, she woke up before breaking her neck and now she’s back to doing her crossword puzzle

May 23, 2022

Why is there a bird chirping outside my window at 3:58 AM

Tukwila, WA
May 29, 2022

One of my favorite things to do while driving is to watch compact sedans turn left, but they jerk to the right first so they turn really wide as if they’re towing a 20-foot trailer

Las Vegas, NV
September 28, 2020

Everybody needs to stop not having air conditioning

Los Angeles, CA
October 4, 2020

Every time I decide I am going to stay up late, I am hit with an overwhelming sense of drowsiness

October 29, 2020

I just got off a phone call with Tempo’s account manager at Chase Bank and I believe she is working from inside her fish tank today

January 19, 2021

I don’t understand why I’m able to park a full-size pickup truck between the lines, but California compact sedans require 1.5 parking spaces

Los Angeles, CA
January 28, 2021

Why do people say “I can’t hear you because of your mask” then proceed to take their own mask off as if that’s going to allow them to hear better

March 7, 2021

All three of my roommate’s cats are shedding their winter coats all at once and I didn’t realize cat hair could be considered a lifestyle until now

Paradise, NV
April 2, 2021

I have decided that one of the most amusing parts of my job is that, one moment, I’ll be handling a matter that could cost the company $400k, then the very next moment, I have to listen to someone have a meltdown about something that will cost ~$60 as if it’s the end of the world

April 15, 2021

I cooked today for the first time in several months and I forgot to salt my stupid salmon

Paradise, NV
April 27, 2021

I ordered a BTS promo meal thingy from McDonald’s and they didn’t give me the special promo sauce

Never lucky

Long Beach, CA
June 3, 2021

I watched two videos of someone cleaning out and trimming a cow’s hooves and now every other video on my YouTube recommendation page is of cows

Denver, CO
June 29, 2021

I asked for an American pickup truck for my rental at Avis

The woman said “we only have one truck left, but I know you’ll like it” and gave me the spot number to a Nissan Frontier

I’m pretty sure that is the most insulting thing you can possibly say and do to a truck enthusiast

Anaheim, CA
August 13, 2021

I don’t understand the people who say “photo dump!” on social media, and then only post 3 pictures

Louisville, KY
September 17, 2021

I needed to refuel my truck before leaving for my next hotel, so I looked up gas stations

I found one nearby across the street and thought “great, this is in walking distance”

I was already halfway there when I realized my minor error

Amarillo, TX
November 21, 2021

New Mexico is confusing because tow trucks are apparently allowed to use blue strobe lights here so I keep thinking I’m getting pulled over

Gallup, NM
November 28, 2021

I wonder if people in Louisiana who don’t know about the existence of Los Angeles, but do know about the existence of LA Fitness, ever assume LA Fitness was founded in Louisiana instead of Los Angeles, and then wonder why there are no LA Fitnesses in Louisiana

Long Beach, CA
December 28, 2021

Someone just came into the gym and set the temperature to 78°F

I am going to die

Loveland, CO
March 22, 2022

I just learned that WA passed a new law banning lids on drinks

If you want one, you have to ask and put it on yourself

I’m sure this highly effective law has saved many lids from all those people who look at their about-to-overflow lattes and say “I don’t need a lid for this”

Issaquah, WA
May 16, 2022

This is the coldest cold I’ve ever caught

I cannot stop sneezing

I cannot stop blowing my nose

I cannot

Tukwila, WA
May 22, 2022

I purchased a 1-gallon jug of water because it was like a quarter of the price of a six pack of bottled water

I am drinking straight out of it, and may or may not be spilling water everywhere

Can’t tell if I played the system or played myself

Henderson, NV
May 24, 2022

Investing US$10,000.00 in the stock market – Parkzer vs. DougDoug’s Twitch chat

January 24, 2022, 11:23 PM by Parkzer • Best of the Best, DougDoug, Finance

Disclaimer: I am not a registered investment advisor and do not have the qualifications to become one. Even if I was one, I would not be your investment advisor; to you, I am nothing more than a random guy on the Internet writing in his personal blog. This content is intended for comedic and entertainment purposes only. Everyone’s situation is uniquely different, so consult a certified professional if you need guidance with your own financial strategy.

A few days ago, my friend Doug Wreden, a broadcast personality who streams on Twitch and makes video content on YouTube, asked if I wanted to join in on a live event he was doing with his community where, together, they would invest $10,000 into the stock market. Unfortunately, I was overloaded with time-sensitive work that entire day and couldn’t join in live, but we decided to do the next best thing, which was for me to participate after-the-fact.

Thus, “Parkzer vs. DougDoug’s Twitch chat” was born.

Rules:

Invest US$10,000.00 into ten individual companies (no index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, or bonds).
No active trading is permitted after the initial purchase (though reinvesting dividends is allowed), and stocks must be held for one year.
The winner is the team with the highest account balance after one year.
Any profits beyond cost basis will be donated to charity.

Doug has very little investing experience (apart from purchasing Dogecoin as a joke and making a +800% return), so he relied on his community’s assistance to research companies and pick out the best stocks. Doug uses Robinhood as his brokerage, so that basically speaks for itself. On the other hand, investing and wealth management is one of my favorite hobbies, and I’ve taken it very seriously ever since my first paying job.

However, I knew I couldn’t let this make me get complacent. There are plenty of studies proving that even monkeys randomly throwing darts on a wall of stock ticker symbols can consistently beat investment advisors. Just because I’ve been doing this for longer doesn’t necessarily mean I am going to perform better by default. I needed to establish a plan.

First, I had to make some predictions and assumptions about what would happen in the coming year. Nobody can predict the future, but what I can do is use current events and cultural trends to make educated guesses. From there, I had to determine which sectors of the market are more and less likely to perform well in the given conditions. Next, I found some companies within those aforementioned sectors that I thought had potential for growth. Finally, I had to trim down my list to ten of my best candidates.

I made three major assumptions upon which I would base my investment decisions:

I think the coronavirus pandemic will continue through sinusoidal phases of getting better and worse throughout the year. Although the latest variant has not been as deadly, it has evolved to become far more contagious. We don’t know how it will mutate next, and with people getting complacent, this is a ripe opportunity for COVID-19 to cause great damage when we least expect it, resulting in a stock market crash.
I think it is more likely for the stock market to stabilize or fall than it is to rise in the coming year. I think the current state of the stock market is not as healthy as it may seem—it is only this high due to absurd inflation and government policy stimulating economic growth. Once things return to normal and people start repaying their COVID-19 disaster relief loans, money will be taken out of circulation and the stock market will revert back to what it “should” be.
I think the development and modernization of core systems will get faster. Technology companies did well the past few years, but it will still require more work to roll out their advancements infrastructurally so it turns from a luxury into something more commonplace. In simpler terms, I think we have a lot of great concepts, prototypes, and first-generation innovations, but now is the time to keep pushing development so it can be used not only by the elite, but also by the general public.

With my grim outlook on the future of the stock market, it is clear that I would have to pick sectors that perform well during a recession. Out of the sectors defined under the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), I knew I wanted to focus on the following:

Consumer staples. No matter how bad the economy, people still need to eat and use core household products. When people have less disposable income, they tend to shift their money away from consumer discretionary and into consumer staples.
Healthcare. Just because the economy is bad doesn’t mean you’re not going to get sick. On top of that, we are still in the middle of a pandemic caused by a virus that is actively mutating. The healthcare industry is booming, ignoring the fact that that’s probably not the most sensitive way to describe people’s misfortune.
Utilities. Similar to the above, people still use utilities during a recession, even if they might try to conserve spending and be more conscious of wastefulness.
Real estate. Again, as you might have guessed, people still need a place to live, even if the economy is bad. However, real estate also bundles in development projects, which ties in with the infrastructural advancements I mentioned above that I think will happen.

I picked three well-established, reputable companies from each of the sectors above, plus three companies from the remaining sectors not listed above. From there, I took the list of 15 and narrowed it down to 10.

Here are my ten stocks picks with the amount of money I allocated to each company, alongside Doug and his community’s stock picks and their allocations:

NextEra Energy, Inc. (NEE)	$ 800.00
Waste Management, Inc. (WM)	$ 800.00
Proctor & Gamble Co. (PG)	$ 1,200.00
Walmart, Inc. (WMT)	$ 1,200.00
Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (BIO)	$ 1,400.00
Pfizer, Inc. (PFE)	$ 1,400.00
American Tower Corp. (AMT)	$ 800.00
Prologis, Inc. (PLD)	$ 800.00
Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (DLR)	$ 600.00
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)	$ 1,000.00

NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA)	$ 1,250.00
Aspen Aerogels, Inc. (ASPN)	$ 750.00
Sony Group Corp. (SONY)	$ 1,250.00
Netflix, Inc. (NFLX)	$ 750.00
Intel Corp. (INTC)	$ 750.00
CRISPR Therapeutics, AG (CRSP)	$ 1,000.00
Hasbro, Inc. (HAS)	$ 1,000.00
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)	$ 750.00
Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST)	$ 1,500.00
The Coca-Cola Co. (KO) PepsiCo, Inc. (PEP)	$ 1,000.00*

*The $1000 for Doug’s final stock selection is split evenly between Coca-Cola and Pepsi as a mini-game between “A Crew” and “Z Crew,” two halves of Doug’s Twitch chat community split by the first letter of their username, to see which brand (and consequently, which crew) has a higher return on investment.

From these stock picks, I think it becomes fairly clear that my portfolio was built not to grow faster, but to decline slower. Thus, if the economy continues to do well, Doug’s portfolio will defeat mine, but the economy slows down, my portfolio’s balance will conclude the year higher.

I’ve loaded all of our stock picks into some portfolio analysis software, and I might do quarterly (or even monthly, depending on level of interest) reports on the performance of our portfolios, showing who is in the process of winning. At the very least, I’ll be providing some statistics, charts, and tables for Doug to be able to review on his live stream.

Seeing as this is ultimately going to be for charity, I wish great success for Doug and his Twitch chat… with the caveat that his portfolio yields 1¢ less profit than mine. GL

Edit (January 28, 2022):

It’s been a week since we started this little competition, so I decided to go back and edit this blog post to add in some bonus content in the form of charts and a graph.

First, one thing to note is that, if you’re attentive to the numbers, you’ll notice that Doug’s cost basis is not a flat $10,000.00. This is because, when he was picking out stocks on his Twitch stream, he intended to invest $500 in Coca-Cola (as in, the competitor to Pepsi), but instead, he accidentally invested it into the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated. This happened because the bottling company’s ticker symbol is COKE, while the Coca-Cola Company’s ticker symbol is KO; Doug and his Twitch chat got those two mixed up.

After I informed Doug of this error, he sold all his shares of COKE and realized $26 in profit, then put all $526 into KO. I was not aware that he was going to do this, otherwise I would have advised him to only put $500.04 back into KO, because that would’ve been the equivalent return on investment from KO from that time period. Thus, because of the transaction, Doug’s numbers are going to be a little bit off.

Hopefully the final results won’t come down to $26, but if our portfolios are indeed within $26 of each other at the end of one year when we determine the winner, we’re going to need to do a bit of math to see how much this affected Doug’s earnings.

After five market days, this is how our portfolios are looking right now:

For comparison, if we had invested the $10,000 into the S&P 500 instead, it would have grown to $10,230—$97 higher than my portfolio, and $363 higher than Doug’s.

Here is a graph of the price change of each of our portfolios, alongside the chart for the S&P 500. Keep in mind that these are by percentage, and are relative values, so this might not be the most intuitive graph. I ideally would have wanted to graph the total value of each of our portfolios over time in dollar amounts, but it seems like that is not a feature offered by my portfolio tracking and analysis software.

When brand loyalty goes a little bit too far

August 22, 2021, 11:39 PM by Parkzer • Best of the Best, Travel

I am extremely loyal to brands. I study and analyze all the available options, then I pick the best one and commit to their services. For brands that are extra favorites of mine, I even go as far as to purchase their publicly-traded stock. The most obvious brand I’ve committed to that is apparent from my recent cross-country road trip is Marriott. I stay only in Marriott hotels, I am Titanium Elite in their Bonvoy loyalty program, and I own thousands of dollars’ worth of stock of Marriott International, Inc.

Delta has recently become one of these brands too. I also own thousands of dollars’ worth of stock of Delta Air Lines, Inc., and if possible, I always take a Delta flight instead of a flight with a different airline. For my recent trip from LAX to ORD, I had the option of flying non-stop via American Airlines. Instead, I chose to fly Delta Flight 937 from LAX to MSP, take a layover, and fly Delta Flight 3582 from MSP to ORD.

The connection was a little bit tight, but I was fairly confident I could make it. Flight 937 would arrive at MSP at 6:44 PM CDT. Flight 3582 departs MSP at 7:25 PM CDT. Boarding doors generally close 15 minutes prior to take-off. That would mean I have a 26-minute window to deplane, go to the next gate, and board my next flight. Hashtag doable.

That is, unless the crew is late, and then the pilot decides to take a very strange flight path. A 1:05 PM PDT on-time departure turned into a 1:14 PM PDT late departure, and a 6:44 PM CDT on-time arrival turned into a 7:04 PM CDT late arrival. Instead of taking a nice, smooth arc from LAX to MSP (or a straight line, if you’re a flat-earther, I guess), the pilot started flying due east out of LAX, presumably to avoid some California wildfires, then went off-angle for a bit, decided to add a nipple to his flight path (probably to avoid a storm in Iowa), then approached MSP from the wrong side and did a circle around the airport.

We deplaned out of the D gates, and my connecting flight was boarding from Gate C20. With a 20-minute arrival delay, that gave me a 6-minute window to make it to my next gate before boarding doors closed. I’ve pulled off some pretty incredible feats at airports, like running two-thirds of a mile with a backpack and luggage in six minutes at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. The unlucky part is that, you’d expect the D gates to start when the C gates end, i.e., it goes from C1 to C25, then D is after C25… but that’s not the case. The D gates are before Gate C1, so getting to C20 is a bit of a trek.

But I wasn’t discouraged. This was still doable.

… My entire six minutes was used up by the flight crew opening the doors and letting us out. We arrived at the gate at 7:04 PM, but the doors didn’t actually open until a few minutes afterwards, and I wasn’t off the plane until a few more minutes on top of that. I checked the Delta app hoping for a delay on my connecting flight, but it showed an on-time departure. There was no way I was going to make this one. I didn’t even bother running.

I made it to Gate C20 by 7:24 PM CDT, just in time for the gate agent to tell me that the plane had already left several minutes ago for an on-time departure. I sort of shrugged it off and asked her where the closest Delta customer support desk was, but others didn’t handle it as well as I did. A couple showed up moments after me; they clearly didn’t understand that boarding doors close prior to the scheduled departure time, and were infuriated that they had made it “just in time,” but the plane was already gone. In their rage, they pulled off their face coverings and started yelling at the gate agent. Did you know that the COVID-19 pandemic stops existing if you’re mad about missing your connecting flight?

Anyway, I managed to find my way to a Delta customer support desk between Gates C1 and C2. There was no representative at the desk so I used the support phones to get my replacement flight booked and sorted; by the time I was done with that, a representative had shown up, so I asked her for a hotel voucher and a toiletry/amenity baggie. I made my way downstairs to ground transportation and hopped on a hotel shuttle bus to the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Bloomington – Minneapolis South, my assigned complementary hotel.

It was a packed shuttle going to the DoubleTree. After about 20 minutes (a bit longer than expected because we went to the other terminal too to pick up more passengers), a group of ~8-10 parties exited the shuttle and walked into the hotel with vouchers for check-in. Ahead of this group were a few guests who had already checked in and needed assistance with their stay.

One of these guests was a man who went up to the counter with two ice cream bars. He had apparently just purchased them for $4 each, but noticed on his receipt that he was overcharged and wasn’t quite sure where (I imagine the receipt wasn’t itemized). The Hilton representative looked up the transaction and let him know that, although the sign said the ice cream bars were $4 each, one of them was actually $5 and the other was $8 (even though they were both the exact same ice cream bar).

The guest requested a refund of the difference in price, and justifiably so—if the ice cream bars are labeled as $4 on the refrigerator, it would make sense that he should only pay $4. The representative tapped on his keyboard a bit, then said “I will refund you $1.52.”

That clearly was not enough to make up for the difference in price, so the guest sort of stood there in confusion and didn’t say anything. Moments later, the representative said “you have been provided with a full refund, please return the ice cream bars back to the refrigerator” … which is obviously not what he just said he would do, and is not what was requested.

The guest clearly had enough. He had mentioned earlier that he was down here to check on the price because he was sick of getting screwed over by this hotel, so I imagine this was not his first incident with the Hilton. I don’t necessarily agree with his methodology, but I definitely don’t blame him for what he did next. In a fury of rage, he crushed the ice cream bars, walked over to the refrigerator, threw them back in, slammed the door, tore off the “$4 each” sign, and slammed it on the check-in desk, pointing out that it was false advertising. He then went to the elevators and returned to his room.

The Hilton representative’s bald head began shining with sweat and his panic ensued. The representative paced back and forth for a bit, then grabbed the phone and called who I presume to be the security office. He acted like there was an active threat, even though the guest had already left. He hung up, picked up the phone again, and made some more calls. Eventually, a few more Hilton staff members, one of whom appeared to be dressed the part for being a manager, came out from the back to see what was going on.

The representative who was involved in the incident pulled up the irate guest’s personal information on file and started reading it aloud in front of the 8-10 parties still awaiting check-in—the ones who had just gotten off the shuttle with me—presumably so another employee could write it down. He then began explaining to the manager what was going on, pointing out that he had basically been assaulted by this guest.

I couldn’t help myself.

I, as the witness closest to the incident, informed the manager that the representative effectively provoked the guest by overcharging him for his purchase, then literally saying he would do one thing to resolve the problem (which wasn’t even an appropriate resolution) and then proceeding to do something completely different. Needless to say, the representative was not happy.

Things eventually settled down. After the manager deescalated the situation (and by “the situation,” I mean “the representative,” because the angry guest had been long gone by this point, and there wasn’t really a situation to deescalate anymore), I was next in line to check in.

Seeing as I had just ratted out this representative to his boss, I wasn’t expecting much. I let him know that I’m Titanium Elite with Marriott Bonvoy, and asked if he would be able to do a status match in benefits for this stay, to which he said “no.” I asked him if I could at least get a complementary bottle of water or something, to which he replied “no.”

My response was, “this is why I stay at Marriotts.”

With an ever-so-barely visible scowl on his face, he put me on the lowest guest room floor of a 22-story building with a nice view of concrete.

After a passable night’s rest, I woke up in time to catch the 8:30 AM shuttle to the airport. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was full, and it was on a first-come, first-served basis, so I was out of luck. My rebooked flight was at 10:30 AM; the hotel’s airport shuttles operated once every hour, and I didn’t want to take the risk of waiting for the 9:30 AM shuttle, so I just called an Uber.

Five minutes into my Uber ride, I got an email from Delta saying that my flight was delayed, with a new departure time of 11:37 AM. That obviously would’ve been nice to know before I had already left the hotel, but it was fine. I’d just spend an extra hour at the airport eating some breakfast and people-watching. … Shortly after I arrived at the airport, I got another email saying the departure had been delayed again, this time to 12:09 PM.

I bought a protein shake and went to an empty gate with nobody around so I could take off my mask and enjoy my drink. I got very lucky with my gate selection, because I happened to pick one where they were running training exercises for the airport bomb-sniffing dogs.

Upon the conclusion of my entertaining dog show, Delta emailed me yet again informing me that my flight had been delayed to a 1:07 PM departure. I looked up the inbound flight for the plane that was supposed to take us to ORD, and apparently it was still grounded at OKC, hours after it was supposed to take off. I assumed it was some sort of mechanical problem with the aircraft (which I later confirmed was correct), so I walked around MSP until I found a power outlet, pulled out my laptop, plugged in, and started getting some work done.

Delta must have thought that this was a great idea, because they delayed the flight again to 2:16 PM.

As the time approached closer to 1 PM, I took another look at the status of the inbound flight and saw that it was en route. I realized that this is likely going to end up being the last delay, and I will finally make it to Chicago. At 1:46 PM, I packed up my laptop and made my way to Gate C14 for boarding. I scanned my boarding pass and got on the plane. Everyone else boarded, the flight attendants closed the boarding doors, the airport crew retracted the jet bridge, and we were ready to leave. My travel day was finally coming to an end.

Then the pilot announced that ORD was grounding all inbound flights at their origin until at least 3 PM due to severe thunderstorms.

Honestly, it would be more surprising if I was surprised.

I pulled out my tablet, opened my Kindle app, loaded up a Stephen King book that I’m in the process of reading, and reclined all the way back in my seat, thankful that I got upgraded to first class.

I was fully prepared and expecting to be told that ORD extended the postponement of inbound flights, but we were actually cleared to depart at 3 PM. We set off, and in under an hour of air time, we arrived safely at ORD. I’m sure you can guess how excited everyone was when we flew into Chicago and saw no trace of the thunderstorms that delayed us for an additional 44 minutes on the Minnesotan tarmac.

Delta is still my favorite airline, and if possible, I will continue to always fly Delta Air Lines. Prior to the past two days, Delta has provided me with notably smooth and high-quality service for years.

However, after this experience… I may possibly consider taking American Airlines in the future if they have a non-stop flight available while Delta does not. 🙂

Re: “How is it financially viable to live out of Marriott hotel rooms for half a year?”

July 19, 2021, 4:10 PM by Parkzer • Best of the Best, Finance, Q&A, Travel

I’ve had a lot of positive feedback regarding my decision to become homeless for half a year and roam around the country. The general consensus is that people are happy I’m finally taking time to myself (as opposed to constantly grinding work), and many are keeping up with my travel blog posts and living vicariously through me.

There have been a few people, though, who think this is a terrible idea, and most of them believe this for financial reasons. I’ve had one person point out that I must be “filthy rich at this point that [I] don’t even know what to do with all my money,” while another has more bluntly stated that I’m a hypocrite for pushing theories of financial responsibility and then proceeding to go do something as “reckless” as this.

I thought a great way to address this and explain just how it’s actually financially viable for me to do something like this is to do a breakdown of how much money I am and would be spending in each of the two living situations.

As a precursor to this, I want to point out that, no, I am not actually filthy rich. I am satisfied with the volume of my various income sources and I am much better off than an overwhelming majority of Americans, but I am in no way considered “rich.”

Also note that I am only 29 years old, and have a Bachelor’s degree and half of an incomplete Master’s degree. This means:

I’ve only been in the workforce for a handful of years, not only because I’m still fairly young, but also because I spent a lot of years in school;
I entered the workforce with an overwhelming amount of student loan debt, a lot of which had relatively high interest rates that I wanted to pay off as soon as possible; and
I’m still busy saving up for retirement, as I want to get as much of that as possible taken care of now so I don’t have to worry about it later.

With that being said, let’s start with a breakdown of what my housing expenses would be had I stayed in Las Vegas. I was originally planning on moving to a studio in the Veer Towers, an all-residential high-rise condominium complex at CityCenter. The main reason I ended up not going this route is because I had some lease agreement conflicts with the property management company and ended up walking away from the contract. But, for this example, we can pretend like this lease went through.

For the past year, real estate in Las Vegas has been absolutely insane—prices have been climbing faster than they’ve ever gone up before. Many rich Californians came into town as a result of work-from-home arrangements during the pandemic, and even though Las Vegas cost of living is still much cheaper than California, it is nowhere near as cheap as it used to be when I moved to Las Vegas in 2018.

The list price for the studio I was looking at was US$1,600.00 per month in rent, which was reasonable relative to the going market rate. I was able to get a small discount off that price, down to $1,550. Note that there is extremely low inventory right now, so I consider that discount to be unreasonably lucky, but I’m still using the discounted rate, seeing as I managed to secure it.

These luxury high-rises on the Strip all have homeowners’ associations, and the HOA dues paid by the owner/landlord cover most utilities. The only additional expenses I would have on top of that would be ~$50/mo. in electricity and ~$100/mo. in Internet service.

Thus, my monthly housing expenses would total $1,700, which averages out to $56.67 per day.

Next, my Marriott hotel situation.

To begin, I want to clarify that Marriott is a massive brand. Marriott is the largest hospitality provider in the world; if you narrow it down to the United States, they’re the hotel chain with the second most locations, just behind Wyndham. With this many properties, there is quite a noticeable range of options when you take a look at all their hotels.

When I say I’m staying at Marriotts across the country, I do not mean I’m staying at places like the Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, or even the JW Marriott. Instead, I’m staying almost entirely at brands like the Courtyard, Fairfield Inn, and Residence Inn. Marriott’s luxury hotels are designed to pamper you with amenities and give you a vacation experience you’ll never forget. Marriott’s “select” collection, as they call it, is designed to give you barebones lodging at an affordable price that still meets the Marriott standard of quality, cleanliness, and safety.

Obviously, the nightly rate can vary substantially depending on where and when I’m staying. If I snag a spot with a promotion and/or an extended stay discount, I could get a room as low as $50 per night. On the other hand, if it’s the weekend and I’m passing through a tourist destination or just happen to be unlucky and am caught in the middle of a big event or convention, sometimes the cheapest I can get is $150 per night.

With all things being considered, I would say that a fairly liberal estimate for an average cost of a night’s stay at a hotel is $75. If I scale that up to a 30-day month, the equivalent rate is $2,250. (Note that this is an all-inclusive rate that already includes taxes and fees, and obviously, there are no extra utility charges at a hotel.)

However, there are two extra things to account for here, the first being percentage-based rewards that functionally act as a discount.

Although you generally cannot pay rent with a credit card (or if you do, you incur an extra processing fee), it is commonplace and often highly encouraged to pay for hotel stays with a credit card. I have a Chase Sapphire Reserve, a card geared specifically towards rewarding those who travel. The Sapphire Reserve gives you 3 reward points for every $1 you spend on travel, and each reward point can be redeemed for 1.5¢ cash value using the new “Pay Yourself Back” promotion. Even outside of the promotion, you can still get a redemption rate of 1.5¢ per point if you redeem your rewards on even more travel. This functionally acts as a 4.5% discount.

I am also a member of Marriott Bonvoy, Marriott’s loyalty program. Through this program, you get reward points derived from how much you spend on Marriott hotel rooms and services (excluding taxes). For each stay, I get a base number of reward points, plus an additional percentage-based bonus due to my high loyalty tier qualification. This, again, can depend on where I stay and what tier of status I happen to be at the time of the stay, but overall, this can functionally translate to being about a 10% discount, as a conservative estimate.

Combining the two rewards programs, I get back about 14.5% of the cost of the hotel room. Using the previous estimate of $75 per night, I get back about $10.88 of value per night, resulting in an effective nightly rate of $64.12, or an effective monthly equivalent rate of $1,923.75.

But it doesn’t end there. The second thing to account for here is that I am not spending the entire seven months, from June 1 to December 31, in hotel rooms. If I’m traveling for work or staying with friends and family, I have to keep paying rent if I’m committed to a residential lease agreement, but for hotel rooms, I simply stop paying for hotel rooms during that period.

During the seven-month period, I will be spending a total of about a month and a half at Tempo‘s company headquarters, spread out in intervals of a week or two. I generally make a routine visit every month or two, and will continue to do so during my travels. While I am in Southern California, I will stay at the residential sector of our offices and will not need to pay for hotel rooms out-of-pocket.

I will also be spending a total of about a month and a half with my parents at their house in the Chicagoland suburbs where I grew up.

As for staying with other friends and family, although I anticipate spending about a month or so with “free” lodging, I will still be purchasing them groceries, restaurant meals, and/or gifts throughout my stay in order to show my appreciation for them hosting me at their home, and I anticipate the cost of this to be comparable to staying at a hotel room. As such, I will not be deducting any expenses for staying with friends or non-parental family members.

If I account for the free lodging at my company headquarters and with my parents, I subtract three months of lodging expenses from the seven months of travel. That calculates out to each night costing 4/7th of its rate, which brings the $64.12 down to $36.64 per night.

We’re almost done, but there’s one more thing to factor in. I’m driving my personal pickup truck to each destination, and there is an additional cost to operate my vehicle beyond what I normally would just by staying put in Las Vegas. I’m not going to count the mileage of going out and getting food or going on tours, but I will count the mileage of going from city to city.

After mapping out my tentative road trip route, I think I am going to drive approximately 7,000 extra miles (11,265 kilometers) over the span of the seven months. According to the IRS standard mileage rate, it costs an average of 56¢ per mile to operate the average vehicle (which includes things like fuel, maintenance, and depreciation).

Although my pickup truck is a mid-size model with a tonneau cover for improved fuel economy and is more efficient than the average pickup truck, it is still slightly more costly than the average vehicle. On the other hand, the standard mileage rate includes stuff like insurance, which I would’ve had to pay for anyway. I’m going to consider those factors as balancing themselves out, and just stick with the standard mileage rate.

The cost to operate a vehicle 7,000 miles is approximately $3,920. Dividing that by 7, we get a monthly rate of $560. Divide that again, this time by 30, and we get a daily rate of $18.67. This needs to be added to the $36.64 nightly rate, bringing it up to $55.31.

And before we come to the final conclusion, I want to address two more miscellaneous points.

First is my food situation. Yes, I won’t be able to cook while I’m on the road… except I haven’t really been cooking much lately anyway. Ever since the pandemic happened and I got a lot of relief funding from the government, I’ve been going out of my way to ensure I support local businesses and restaurants. Ever since March 2020, I have been eating almost exclusively at family-owned local restaurants (as opposed to going grocery shopping and cooking for myself). I will continue to do so during my travels, and the cost of that will be net-neutral relative to pre-travel.

Second is the time it will take me to get from city to city, and the opportunity cost associated with that time. I did not factor this into the calculation because I feel like I am putting in my time and effort of driving in exchange for receiving amazing experiences visiting new cities across the country. On top of that, driving, to some extent, is therapeutic to me, so I don’t mind sitting in my truck for a few hours at a time just listening to music and observing the scenery.

So the final verdict.

Renting a place in Las Vegas and living a “normal” life would cost me ~$56.67 per day, $1,700.00 per month, or $11,900.00 for the full seven-month period. Traveling the country and being a nomad would cost me approximately $55.31 per day, $1,659.20 per month, or $11,615.00 for the full seven-month period. (The numbers don’t line up perfectly to their fractional counterparts due to rounding and decimals.)

Yes, in my unique situation, I am literally saving a tiny bit of money by doing things the way I am.

If you truly thought I didn’t account for the financial implications and consequences of my decision, then you don’t know me very well.

What other guides don’t tell you about finances for content creators and influencers

April 23, 2021, 7:31 PM by Parkzer • Best of the Best, Finance

I’ve noticed that financial literacy has been on the rise exponentially in the past year. I imagine it is a combination of people studying finance on a need-to-know basis after hardship caused by the COVID-19 economic disaster, people being bored during the COVID-19 pandemic isolation period and wanting to put their time to better use, and the ever-increasing accessibility of knowledge through the Internet.

I’m the Director of Operations of Tempo. We started out as an esports team and gaming strategy content website, but have since then expanded to be a gaming and interactive media production company and game development company. I joined back in 2015 when the company was a year old and have stuck with it—through all its ups and downs—for the past 6 years. As the head of corporate operations, I oversee and personally handle a lot of the company’s legal, finance, and human resources matters.

As you’d expect from a role like that, I am one of two people in the entire company who have the security clearance to access any and all of our confidential and sensitive information. That gives me a unique insight into our employees’ and contractors’ lives and allows me to build a general profile of what the average esports player, content creator, and influencer is like from a financial sense.

This guide is not going to walk you through the fundamentals of being a content creator. I’m not going to tell you when you can quit your day job, or describe how you can best monetize your Twitch stream, or explain how to file your taxes as someone with no W-2 income. If you don’t know how to even get started being a sole proprietor, or if you don’t even know what that means, then you need to take care of that first.

Instead, this guide is going to point out some basic things about finances that I often never see covered in other guides. Maybe it’s because these are a bit more obscure, or maybe it’s because relaying this kind of information to someone may be perceived as brutal. Either way, I think this is information that you need to know to improve your baseline financial competency as a content creator or other kind of online influencer.

As a disclaimer, I live in the United States, and a lot of this advice is geared specifically for residents of the United States. Additionally, I am not an investment advisor, certified accountant, financial advisor, or real estate agent… and even if I was, I wouldn’t be your advisor, accountant, or agent. To you, I am nothing more than a guy on the Internet writing blog posts on his personal website. If any of this information sounds helpful to you, make sure you consult with a real professional to see how this may apply to your unique, individual situation.

You probably won’t have this job forever.

You need to worry about your job security far more than normal people. If a “normie” loses their job, they can submit their résumé to a similar, comparable company and probably get hired somewhere else (unless they did something incredibly stupid and got involuntarily terminated due to their conduct). You, on the other hand, can’t really do that. How many companies do you think would want to hire you when your entire professional experience involves playing video games all day and talking to a camera?

A lot can change in the content creation and entertainment industry. There might be some sort of accident that affects your face, and people stop watching your content because they no longer find you attractive. That sounds terrible, but you very well know that that’s definitely a possibility. Maybe, due to the stress and pressure of being a content creator, you start overeating and become overweight, and then people stop watching your content because they, again, no longer find you attractive.

Even on a less personal level, trends change. What if you’re a video game streamer, but the video game (or maybe even the entire genre) that you’re good at becomes not as popular anymore? There are many examples of extremely popular StarCraft II players who just don’t pull viewership numbers anymore because people don’t really play much StarCraft anymore. Or, what if your target audience gets older and consumes less content, while you fail to make a personal connection with the new younger generation?

What if you randomly get canceled for something you didn’t do? What if someone just doesn’t like you or is jealous of your success, and decides to make up a story that turns your entire community against you? It’s considered taboo to ask questions or not believe the victim. Sure, you can file a defamation lawsuit, but what about your income source right now?

Never take a single day as a content creator for granted. Save your money like your life depends on it, because it does. Take this especially to heart if you don’t have an academic background or degree beyond secondary school that you can fall back on if your content creation career goes awry.

Treating yourself to something that makes you happy once in a while is very important, but I do not recommend splurging on anything big until you have five (yes, five) years’ worth of basic expenses saved up. This should obviously be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and the savings buffer can be reduced depending on your non-influencer qualifications, but the 3-6 months of expenses that normies save up for is not enough for you. Five years’ worth of expenses will cover things while you get back on your feet, enroll in a vocational or trade school, and build a up a new career.
Invest in your own safety and security.

As a public figure, there is a large target on your forehead. No matter how wholesome and well-liked you might be, there will still be people out there who dislike you. Most people take out their anger by sending you mean messages on social media, but there are people out there who are mentally unstable and will take things too far. If you are unlucky, you end up becoming a victim of one of these people.

One of the best ways to invest your money is to spend a little bit more to make sure you are safe and secure in your home.

It might feel good saving a ton of money by living in a regular house in a regular neighborhood with a bunch of other people, but that leaves you out in the open. It is fairly easy to find people’s addresses nowadays. For example, did you know that, if you are registered to vote and didn’t fill out a special form to tell your local government not to release your information, your address and party affiliation becomes public record? If you live in a regular house, someone can literally drive up to your home and threaten you in-person.

Ever since moving out of my parents’ house, I have never lived in a publicly-accessible location. I’ve only lived in high-density apartments and condominium complexes that have 24/7 security. At the condo that I recently moved out of, you would need a credential to even drive into the building property at all, then you need a key fob to get into the building, a key fob to be able to use the elevator, then a physical key to unlock your door and bolt lock to your own unit. Does this absolutely guarantee that a predator won’t show up at my door? No, but it sure makes it borderline impossibly difficult.

You are your own most valuable asset. If you have the funds available to upgrade your living situation, don’t underestimate the value of security guards and restricted-access building lobbies that stand between your door and the street. (On a related note, don’t fall for the false sense of security that an unattended “gated community” might give you—those are functionally useless, as people can climb over the gate, and the access code is often given away by your neighbors to delivery drivers.)
Set up a wishlist of personal items you need or want.

A lot of content creators and influencers have Amazon wish lists or other gift registries, but people tend to make two distinct mistakes. First, some people… don’t actually have wish lists. Second, some people put exclusively business items on their wish list but leave out all their personal items.

It is in your best interest to buy business expenses with your own pre-tax income so you can write them off as deductions, and be gifted personal items from others so you end up saving as much of your post-tax income as possible. The magical element here is that you do not have to report your gifts as income (because they are gifts); taxes on gifts are (usually) paid by the giver, not the receiver.

Imagine that there is something worth $70 that you have to buy for business. All you need to do to earn this purchase is to make $70 and buy the business item. Now imagine that there is something worth $70 that you have to buy for personal reasons. In order to afford this $70, you have to make about $100 in actual income, pay $30 in income taxes (this is just an example, and your tax bracket may be different), and then use the leftover $70 to buy your personal item. Consequently, if someone wants to give you money to buy this $70 personal product, it’s in their best interest to just straight-up buy and give you the $70 product, as opposed to giving you $70 in cash so you can buy it yourself—because, after taxes, $70 in cash won’t be enough anymore.

There’s nothing wrong with putting high-value business expenses on your wish list, especially if you have a few whales who love to spend a ton of money on you. However, keep in mind that, if you still have personal expenses left that you need to account for, it’s not optimal for someone to buy you business products in lieu of personal products, if the value of both products are identical.
Take full advantage of all your tax-advantaged retirement accounts.

Most people are aware of IRAs now and have started a Roth or Traditional IRA with their favorite brokerage or provider. If you’re going for a long-term savings plan, it is very important that you max out this account every single year before you put your money in any other kind of savings platform. For example, if you have an individual brokerage account and an IRA, and your investment objective is long-term growth, and you put money in your individual brokerage account prior to maxing out your IRA’s yearly contribution, you’re doing it wrong.

(As a disclaimer, note that I said you should always be maxing out your IRA if you have a long-term savings plan. Early withdrawals from IRAs come with penalties, so if you need investments with the utmost liquidity for an upcoming big purchase, then putting that income in tax-advantaged retirement accounts may not be the best course of action. If you are unsure how to proceed, consult with your own tax professional prior to committing to any investments.)

But let’s say that you’ve already put in the maximum allotted amount into your Roth IRA this year, but you still have some leftover funds that you want to invest for long-term growth. Then you would put that money into your individual brokerage account, right? … Well, no.

As a sole proprietor, you have access to more tax-advantaged retirement savings options. Before you start buying index funds on your regular brokerage account, do some research and look into SEP-IRAs, i401(k)s, and SIMPLE IRAs. These are all special retirement programs for business owners (and all content creators and influencers who make Form 1099-NEC income count as business owners, even if you might be your own employee), and they may carve a fairly large chunk away from your tax liability.

For example, I have a SEP-IRA with Vanguard. Each year, I can contribute several thousand dollars into this SEP-IRA, depending on how much taxable income I made that year—and this is on top of the $6,000 I put in my Roth IRA. These several thousand dollars in my SEP-IRA are tax-deductible, which means it’s as if I had never made this income to begin with. Within this SEP-IRA, I am able to invest my money as if it was a normal brokerage account. Seeing as my objective is long-term growth, I usually buy growth-oriented Admiral Shares, a special type of index fund by Vanguard.
Be cautious of aggressive Schedule C deductions if you’re planning on getting a traditional mortgage soon.

The real estate market has been absolutely insane lately, and you might be someone who wants to get in on the hype. Warnings of emotional investing aside, if you do truly want to purchase a house, chances are, you’ll need to borrow some money from a lender and get a mortgage.

This process is fairly straightforward for normies because they’re on a set salary. The lender will contact their employer, check on their job security, verify their employment, and base their approval amount on their salary. However, independent contractors generally don’t have set salaries—you never know how much advertising revenue or sponsorships or tips/donations you’re going to get each month—so lending to an independent contractor is inherently higher-risk.

The way banks calculate how much they lend to an independent contractor is to look at your Schedule C in your yearly Form 1040 filing to the IRS. From there, they look at your net income (not gross income), re-add business expenses for home office use and depreciation, and subtract the remaining 50% of your meals deduction to find your overall yearly income. They look at the previous two years of tax returns for this; if your income has increased year-over-year, they take the average of the two, and if your income has decreased, they use the lower value.

If you’re intuitive, you may see where this is going. If you take a lot of business expense deductions, your net income is going to decrease, and your mortgage amount is going to decrease as well. This is because lenders are using the information on your Schedule C while honoring the true spirit of the concept of “business deductions,” in the sense that, the only reason you were able to make that amount of gross income is because you had to spend your own money too. Thus, they don’t see deductions as ever having been your money, but rather, a resource you needed to use to make your income.

For people with squeaky clean Schedule Cs, this might not be a problem. However, if you smudge your deductions a bit or walk within the gray area, it may seem counterintuitive to have a lower mortgage approval amount, even though you’re keeping more money by giving less of it to the government in taxes.

I personally faced this problem for years, and this is the conclusion I came to: If you’re rich enough that you’re willing to pay income taxes on your money, then the lender can feel comfortable taking that money into consideration when determining how much you can borrow. If you’re taking a ton of deductions, the bank has no concrete way to prove that you’re not just scraping by and taking those deductions because you have to, so it’s in their best interest to not take the risk and just disregard that from being eligible income.

And yes, there is yet another side to this—independent contractors can just elect not to take deductions (because you are not required by law to take deductions), thus artificially inflating how much money it appears like they’re making. Banks would then base their lending decision on this information, you end up wasting more money on taxes, you get a bigger mortgage, and you increase your chances of not being able to make payments and defaulting on the loan.

This is obviously a fairly involved process, and I have no be-all-end-all advice for you apart from doing research on this and calculating a good balanced situation for yourself for your taxes. The point here is, don’t be caught off guard that this system exists in this manner, and educate yourself about how mortgages work (and possibly some alternative lending solutions) at least two years before you plan on purchasing a house.

As you’d imagine, this only scratches the surface of finances for sole proprietors. I’d classify most of this as basic information, or low-intermediate at best—and this is why a lot of people off-load their finances to a certified accountant.

I mentioned this at the top of this blog post, but to reiterate, if any of this seems useful to you, make sure you do your own research and reach out to your own advisors and professionals to figure out how this may apply to your unique, individual situation.