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.

Cash

If you’ve at all been keeping up with the state of the current financial climate, you know that interest rates in the United States are very high right now. Although I am a strong proponent of time in the market being better than timing the market, I haven’t been heeding my own advice and have instead been holding onto more cash than usual.

Of course, considering that it is the end of a calendar year and tax-advantaged account limitations reset on January 1, a large portion of my cash is already “accounted for” in its purpose. I have $7k ready to go for my personal IRA, more than $25k for my SEP-IRA, and just over $4k for my HSA—all of this is just sitting there as cash waiting for markets to open on January 2, 2024 after the holiday.

However, beyond the above, I am still holding even more cash on top of that just for the sake of farming reliable returns on my deposits. I think the economy is actually doing worse than it may appear on the surface, so instead of immediately dollar-cost av­er­aging and dumping all my money directly into investments, I am balancing it out and keeping decently large chunks of cash in sav­ings and money market accounts.

My primary sav­ings account is with Discover Bank, which has an interest rate of 4.35% as of today—this is what I use for incoming ACH transfers and depositing checks. Excluding my emergency fund of three months’ worth of expenses, I keep the rest on Van­guard in my core position, the Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX), currently with a 5.32% yield. Considering that my primary brokerage for investments is also Vanguard, having this money in VMFXX means I always have plenty of available balance to make short-notice trades, if needed. And finally, I have a less-frequently-utilized variant of this on Fidelity as well, the Fidelity Gov­ern­ment Money Market Fund (SPAXX), currently with a 5.01% yield.

Domestic broad market index funds

I’m sure this is not surprising to anyone—the largest category in my portfolio is taken up by broad market index funds. Most of this is in Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX), with Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index Fund Admiral Shares (VHYAX) coming in at second.

When asked, I often talk about all the strange and interesting investment opportunities I’ve found, but it is very important to un­der­stand that those weird investments make up an exceedingly small percentage of my portfolio, and a bulk of it is in “boring” mutual funds. I purchased more shares of VHYAX during the pandemic when the stock market was volatile and I wanted some more sta­bil­i­ty, but my go-to investment is VTSAX.

As for the investments I hold in my Fidelity account, like my Health Savings Account or my Fidelity Charitable account, I will keep those funds in the Fidelity ZERO® Total Market Index Fund (FZROX).

International total mar­ket index funds

This is the category that has probably seen the biggest change in the past year. I do want to stay invested in the international stock market because I want exposure outside the United States to diversify my portfolio, but this segment is currently in a bit of a work-in-progress state.

I used to have a decent chunk of money invested in Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTIAX), but over the past year and a half, I ended up selling all of it for tax loss harvesting purposes.

After waiting out the wash sale period, I re-entered the international market by means of the Fidelity ZERO® International Index Fund (FZILX). If you compare my percentage here relative to some previous portfolio breakdowns, you’ll see that I didn’t buy back in as heavily as I used to own, but I’m going to continue working my way up here over time in this fund.

Target date funds

The money I have invested in my tax-advantaged retirement accounts is all in target date funds. The reason I separate this out as its own line item in my breakdown is because target date funds automatically reallocate their composition to be riskier when further a­way from the target date and safer when approaching the target date. Thus, due to how time-consuming it would be to go in and man­u­al­ly calculate this for my breakdowns, I decided years ago to just give them their own category.

I used to put most of my retirement money into the Vanguard Target Retirement 2060 Fund (VTTSX) but later started splitting it half-and-half with the Vanguard Target Retirement 2055 Fund (VFFVX) as well.

Recently, after realizing that I am doing much better financially now than I had ever imagined I would be when I was in my younger 20s, and foreseeing a sooner and sooner retirement, I kept my VTTSX and VFFVX as-is but have put everything new into the Van­guard Target Retirement 2050 Fund (VFIFX) instead so my retirement accounts don’t tank in the event of an untimely stock mar­ket crash during the 40s or 50s. I don’t anticipate switching to a 2045 fund, though—there are tax penalties for withdrawing funds before turning 59½ years old, and that will happen for me in 2051.

Some people have asked me why I don’t just manage the compositions myself to save a little bit on the expense ratio. That is a good point, considering how active of an investor I am, but I already have plenty of money in individual brokerage accounts that I self-manage, and it gives me additional peace of mind to have my money spread out in different fund types. In the highly unlikely but non-zero chance that I become unable to manage my own investments in the future, e.g., through some acquired mental disability or incapacitating injury, and if my caretaker is financially illiterate… even if my other investments may go to chaos during stock market un­rest, my retirement accounts will stay stable on their own thanks to Vanguard’s management.

Real es­tate investment trusts (REITs)

I’ve been exploring some options of investing in physical real estate for the past few years, but never got around to it because I never felt like it was the best time to do so considering all my circumstances at the time. I’m still keeping an eye out on good opportunities, but because the interest rates are so high on mortgages, I’m making sure I’m not acting too hastily.

In the meantime, my portfolio still has real estate exposure through real estate investment trusts. My REIT of choice is Vanguard Real Es­tate Index Fund Admiral Shares (VGSLX). I may sell some of these off in the future for tax loss harvesting or to free up cash for a down payment to purchase physical real estate, but until then, I’ve just been holding onto what I have and automatically re­in­vest­ing div­i­dends.

Bonds

As I mentioned previously in the section about target date funds, I trust Vanguard to manage my retirement funds and allocate an ap­pro­pri­ate percentage of my money into bonds automatically. For my self-managed funds, I’m still young and still have reliable net-positive cash flow, so I’m investing in stocks and generally avoiding bonds.

With that being said, I’m still holding onto the United States Department of the Treasury‘s Series I Savings Bonds that I purchased over the past few years when inflation skyrocketed during and shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m not interested in pur­chas­ing more in 2024 due to the new 5.27% interest rate not being much better than my savings and money market accounts, at the further detriment of having to sacrifice a few months’ worth of interest if I want to liquify it prior to the five-year mark.

Everything else here that isn’t directly with the Treasury is in Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VBTLX).

Cryptocurrency

It’s been quite a wild ride being a cryptocurrency owner. I originally bought in as a way to learn hands-on about blockchain tech­nol­o­gy and more effectively perform my job duties at Tempo, but that resulted in me being down multiple tens of thousands of un­re­al­ized losses at one point. Luckily, I didn’t panic sell—I more-or-less dismissed it as “gambling losses” and kept holding in case it went back up.

I held onto the shares of Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC) and Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW) I already had, as well as some random coins I had in my self-custodied hardware wallet. In early 2023 during the United States banking crisis and the fol­low­ing panic, even after saying I wouldn’t invest more in crypto­currency, I made a discretionary purchase of some Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO).

Cryptocurrency has bounced back a substantial amount, which is good news for me, and I am now hovering around break-even. I’m still not selling, though—I’m not too worried about the money, and cryptocurrency is a good way to diversify my portfolio anyway, so I’ll be keeping this as a hedge against further instances of financial crises, unrest, or failure.

Individual stocks and private companies

I haven’t been too active in trading individual stocks, so most of what I own here has been under the buy-and-hold strategy. I still own a few to several thousands of dollars’ worth each of some of my favorite companies: Marriott International, Inc. (MAR), Cloud­flare, Inc. (NET), T-Mobile US, Inc. (TMUS), and Stellantis, N.V. (STLA).

In September 2023, I bought several thousand dollars’ worth of shares of TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (TKO) after the merger be­tween World Wrestling Entertainment and Ultimate Fighting Championship. I used to watch a ton of WWE when I was a kid, and I currently train casually with the UFC, so I figured this would be a fun and meaningful purchase.

A few years ago, I invested in Atlis Motor Vehicles, Inc., which turned out to be a comical failure. I bought 50 shares privately at a little over $8 each, and their initial public offering was at $27.50 (which garnered enough hype to peak at over $82 that day). Not long after, the stock price plummeted. They rebranded to NXU, Inc., which continued to be a clown show—the stock price kept falling until it was at a point where it barely broke two cents. In order to not be delisted, NXU performed a 1-to-150 reverse stock split. My 50 shares disappeared from my brokerage account, and I imagine it is soon to be replaced by ⅓rd of one share.

And finally, I am now the owner of $2,000 worth (cost basis) of unsponsored American depository receipts of Nexon Co., Ltd. (NEXOY). For a little bit of context, when I live stream on Twitch, viewers can accrue “points” on the platform to redeem for prizes, and one of my prizes is to spend $2k of my money to invest in any security listed on the NYSE, NASDAQ, OTCQX, or OTCQB. I gave my childhood best friend Ed Lam a free redemption of this while we were playing MapleStory together; he told me to “invest in MapleStory,” so I bought NEXOY as the closest available solution.

Precious metals

I went on an “alternative investments” binge during the COVID-19 pandemic to diversify my portfolio, dipping my toes into things without having much knowledge about them or doing sufficient research. One of those areas was precious metals, which I bought after learning about the historical stability of gold.

I wasn’t in a position to buy the physical metals and keep them myself, so I was seeking an investment vehicle via a custodian. How­ev­er, the lack of research meant that, although my intent was to purchase gold itself, I ended up buying a fund that has only indirect exposure to gold—the Fidelity® Select Gold Portfolio (FSAGX).

I don’t have any plans for this at the moment—I’ll just be leaving this in my Fidelity account until something prompts or forces me to take further action.

Fine art, and other collectibles

Just like precious metals, investing in fine art was part of my extreme diversification efforts. I obviously don’t have the net worth to straight-up buy physical fine art, so instead, I participated in StartEngine Collectibles Fund I, LLC’s Regulation A+ as a next-best option.

Unfortunately, some of my investment was refunded to me because minimum funding goals weren’t met, and StartEngine has had horrid proactive communication throughout the process. The amount of money I put into this experiment was so little that I ended up just losing interest, so if this does end up going anywhere useful, it will be an unexpectedly pleasant surprise later.