Cash

I have always said this, and I will continue to say it: I always prioritize time in the market over timing the market. As a result, I always encourage people to hold onto somewhere around 3-6 months’ worth of core living expenses, and then put the rest into investments right away, as soon as possible. It doesn’t always matter which investments you pick; the most important part is that you are not just holding it in deflating cash.

I personally err on the side of safety and lean closer to a buffer of six months’ worth of living expenses held in cash. Especially now with my company Tempo going through an uncertain and volatile financial period, I have been giving the company loans and delaying my personal compensation so that the corporation can have more working capital, so it is more important now than usual for me to have a cash buffer in my bank account.

(And in case you’re wondering, no, I did not just leak some exclusive insider information; because AVY Entertainment, Inc., d.b.a. Tempo had a Regulation CF offering, it has to file yearly Form C-ARs available for public viewing on the SEC’s website, so it is public knowledge by this point that our financial state is anything but stable.)

Most of the cash I hold as my emergency fund is inside a savings account at Discover Bank, which was recently acquired by Capital One. A limited amount of it is also inside my brokerage accounts’ settlement funds—Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX) on Vanguard and the Fidelity Government Money Market Fund (SPAXX) on Fidelity.

Domestic broad market index funds

Like usual, an overwhelming majority of my portfolio is still invested in domestic broad market index funds, a very boring but very safe category. Nothing much has changed here—I put little bits of money into interesting investments as I see the opportunities arise, but otherwise, the rest of my money goes into these index funds.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I bought a lot of Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index Fund Admiral Shares (VHYAX) to try and weather out the uncertainty of the market, as dividend funds were not as unpredictable as growth funds. Before and after the pandemic, I mainly bought Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX). As I mentioned above in the introduction, I haven’t been buying much Vanguard non-retirement funds and have been investing in Fidelity funds instead, so the shares of VHYAX and VTSAX I own are pretty old.

As for the new money I’ve been putting into domestic broad market index funds, it’s all been going into the Fidelity ZERO Total Market Index Fund (FZROX). One of the downsides of this Fidelity ZERO fund is that it is non-transferrable, so if I ever need to move this out to a different brokerage, I would have to have a gigantic taxable event to realize all my gains, as there are no in-kind securities at other brokerages. With that being said, I don’t foresee a major scenario where I would have to do that anytime soon, so that is a risk I was willing to take in exchange for the 0% expense ratio.

International broad market index funds

One of my main investment goals during 2025 was to invest more in the international market, and I definitely succeeded at that. During my end-of-2024 investment breakdown, I shared that my allocation in international broad market index funds was only just barely over 5%. Since then, I have doubled that to over 10%.

In 2025, I finished selling my entire position in Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTIAX) for the purposes of tax loss harvesting. After waiting out the wash sale period, I put all that money (and more) back into the international market via the Fidelity ZERO International Index Fund (FZILX). (And yes, a lot of resources have told me that VTIAX and FZILX likely do not count as substantially similar enough to trigger a wash sale, but I wasn’t in a rush and preferred to just be safe.)

Although I am happy with how much progress I’ve made towards shifting my domestic vs. international ratio in the direction I wanted, I still think I need more exposure to international markets relative to the amount of belief I have in international markets. Thus, throughout this year as well, I will continue investing more into FZILX while not putting as much into FZROX.

Bonds

Back during the COVID-19 pandemic, I purchased Series I Savings Bonds from the United States Department of the Treasury as a hedge against the rampant inflation that was happening as a result of the government printing an insane amount of new money. Although the returns aren’t as crazy right now, I remember the annual rates exceeding 9% during the peak of pandemic relief efforts.

I haven’t sold my Series I Savings Bonds yet because there is a penalty on the interest if you sell it when the bond is less than five years old. However, in case you haven’t been keeping track, it’s already 2026, so my bonds’ five-year maturity dates are either approaching very quickly or have already passed. This is going to be one of my upcoming projects—checking the exact dates when I purchased the bonds, then coming up with a plan on when to sell them and how to reinvest the proceeds.

Apart from that, I also finished selling my entire position in Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VBTLX) in 2025 for tax loss harvesting. After (again, potentially unnecessarily) waiting out the wash sale period, I put that money back into bonds via the Fidelity US Bond Index Fund (FXNAX).

For now, I’m unsure how I’m going to proceed with regards to purchasing more bonds. I am getting older, but I’m still not that old. I would consider myself as having a medium risk tolerance, which is high enough that I don’t want to doomsday prep by pulling out of the stock market and dumping everything into bonds. I will think on this a bit more over the next year and report back during my next investment portfolio breakdown.

Target date funds

I split my target date funds off into a separate category because they are a combination package of different kinds of index funds and bonds that automatically adjust based on which target year you pick. For example, if you elect a fund for 2030, it means that you are retiring soon and need stability (i.e., bonds) in your portfolio; if you elect a fund for 2070, it means that you’re a recent addition to the workforce and won’t be retiring for a long time, so you need growth (i.e., stocks) in your portfolio.

Considering how active of an investor I am, it may be strange to see that I take advantage of these “set it and forget it” kind of funds in exchange for paying a higher expense ratio. The reason I do it is a form of diversification in the sense that, if I ever become incapacitated up to the point where I am no longer able to manage my investment portfolio anymore, target date funds end up being a hedge against my money still being in highly volatile funds at the time of my retirement and potentially tanking due to a neglectful absence of response to a falling market.

When I first started buying target date funds, I bought shares of the Vanguard Target Retirement 2060 Fund (VTTSX). Over time, I realized that I am doing quite well financially, so I foresaw an earlier retirement and put new money into the Vanguard Target Retirement 2055 Fund (VFFVX) instead. Then, with even more time passing, I realized that I am doing better financially than I would’ve ever imagined, so now I’ve been putting all new retirement money into the Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 Fund (VFIFX).

As of today, VFIFX is composed of 51.9% Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Institutional Plus Shares (VSMPX), 37.7% Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Investor Shares (VGTSX), 7.3% Vanguard Total Bond Market II Index Fund Investor Shares (VTBIX), and 3.1% Vanguard Total International Bond II Index Fund Institutional Shares (VTILX). The further-out VFFVX and VTTSX are both composed of 52.3% VSMPX, 38.1% VGTSX, 6.7% VTBIX, and 2.9% VTILX.

Note that I am only buying these inside my Roth IRA and SEP-IRA.

Real estate investment trusts (REITs)

I’m still keeping an eye out for good real estate purchase opportunities, but until something comes up, my only real estate exposure is through real estate investment trusts. Realistically, I foresee my first major real estate investment being an self-occupied property, but I’m having a great time being a nomad right now and not rushing to wrap up that chapter of my life yet. I can of course just become a landlord, but that comes with a lot of obligations and locks up a chunk of my capital that I could instead reserve as more liquid securities.

My position in Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund Admiral Shares (VGSLX) is still negative at the moment, so I’ve been selling it off little by little for tax loss harvesting and reinvesting it in other funds. For example, in early January 2026 when my tax-advantaged retirement account limits reset, I sold US$7,000.00 of VGSLX and did a Vanguard-to-Vanguard transfer into my Roth IRA account as a contribution, then purchased VFIFX with that balance.

I do still want to maintain real estate exposure though, so for whatever amount of VGSLX I sell, I end up buying a comparable amount of Fidelity Real Estate Index Fund (FSRNX) at some point in the future (after the wash sale period). In the further future where I finally jump on a property purchase opportunity, I will likely sell my REITs (to whatever extent is reasonable in a capital gains tax sense) and apply it towards a down payment on my mortgage.

Individual stocks and private companies

I had a phase during the COVID-19 pandemic during which I had a lot of fun trading individual stocks, but since then, that interest has faded. As of today, I only own individual stocks in Marriott International, Inc. (MAR), T-Mobile US, Inc. (TMUS), and TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (TKO).

Most notably, I finally sold off my position in Nxu, Inc. (NXU). For those missing the lore, I contributed US$564.80 during one of Atlis Motor Vehicles’ early funding rounds because I thought their electric pickup trucks seemed cool. Since then, the company became an absolute disaster, rebranded, and was fighting a constant struggle against being delisted because their stock price tanked so much. After holding on for a long time, I eventually gave up and sold my ownership for US$0.92, resulting in an overall loss of US$563.88.

For my next individual stock purchase, I’m looking at companies that give discounts or other perks to shareholders. For example, I learned that some cruise lines like Royal Caribbean International will give on-board credits to cruisers who own 100 shares of Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. (RCL). Beyond travel, I also found out that companies like Ford offer special X-Plan Partner Pricing to people who own 100 shares of Ford Motor Company (F). A hundred shares of RCL is a commitment of over US$30,000.00 as of today, so that is something I would only buy if RCL completely crashes, but 100 shares of F is only a little over a thousand dollars, which I think is very manageable and could be useful if I ever end up wanting to buy a Ford or Lincoln vehicle later.

As a side note, I am not including my equity ownership of AVY Entertainment, Inc., d.b.a. Tempo in this portfolio breakdown, not only because it is a private company and pinpointing an accurate and up-to-date valuation is relatively tricky, but also because my ownership in the company is large enough that it would probably skew this breakdown and make it less useful from the general public’s perspective.

Debt instruments

New as of 2025, I diversified my portfolio even more by investing into debt instruments. In simpler terms, I have basically become a lender for people’s loans. Of course, I’m not going out there and literally letting people borrow money; instead, I purchased shares of the Fidelity Investment Grade Securitized ETF (FSEC).

I’ve noticed that people are borrowing a lot of money. After hearing stories that my friends in Los Angeles tell me, it seems like everyone is just buried in debt because they want to pretend like they’re rich and show off to their friends, and people are basically drowning under uncontrollable waves of interest payments. I’ve also noticed the rise of easy-approval “buy now, pay later” platforms that give out no-friction micro-loans for basic, day-to-day purchases that facilitate people going deeper into debt.

I think this is a problem, and I would like educational institutions to teach students more about personal finance so that people do not fall into these debt traps. With that being said, I’m also not going to simply pass on this category of investment. Although FSEC isn’t going to hold a substantial percentage of volatile short-term loans per se, it is still a way for me to try and make some profit from the lending industry.

Cryptocurrency

My cryptocurrency holdings are just as volatile as ever. As I write this, I am looking at the price of Bitcoin that has fallen to lows that have not been seen since April of last year. Fortunately, my cryptocurrency investment started as basically a gambling fund, and in the big-picture scope of things, I still have gargantuan returns from cryptocurrency.

I still have a little bit of cryptocurrency self-custodied in a cold hardware wallet, but my holdings are primarily in the form 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), Bitwise Trendwise Bitcoin and Treasuries Rotation Strategy ETF (BITC), and ProShares Bitcoin ETF (BITO). As you can see, even within cryptocurrency, my holdings are decently diversified—I have exposure to Bitcoin, Bitcoin futures, and other smaller coins.

Although holding as much of my cryptocurrency as possible as actual tokens in my personal wallet is the most cost-efficient in terms of avoiding management fees, I still have all these in a traditional brokerage for two main reasons. The first is because I have a substantial amount of unrealized gains on my holdings, and selling all this off to repurchase it as actual coins would trigger a huge taxable event. The second is that most people still don’t know how to manage hardware wallets, so if I ever become incapacitated to the point where someone else has to manage my portfolio, I can rest easy that that’s easy to do on Fidelity, as opposed to my caretaker needing to fiddle around with what is basically a little USB drive.

International currency

As part of my efforts to increase my exposure to international investments, I also started purchasing international currency trusts alongside the aforementioned international broad market index funds. I started dabbling in currency in 2024, then expanded my holdings during 2025.

Right now, I own some shares in each of the Invesco CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE), Invesco CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY), Invesco CurrencyShares British Pound Sterling Trust (FXB), and Invesco CurrencyShares Australian Dollar Trust (FXA). There wasn’t really a whole lot of research or a solid foundational methodology behind selecting those currencies in particular; they just sounded familiar enough to me that I bought some. I didn’t feel the need to put a particularly deep amount of thought into it, considering that this only composes a very small percentage of my portfolio.

Precious metals

During the COVID-19 pandemic when I wanted to diversify my portfolio and invest in assets that could hedge against the volatile and crashing market, I bought some shares of Fidelity Select Gold Portfolio (FSAGX) and let it sit in my Fidelity brokerage account without thinking much about it.

Since then, I got some more motivation to look into investing in precious metals, only to discover that FSAGX technically counts as gold exposure, but isn’t quite as gold as it can get. I do have a vague memory of having wanted to invest in actual gold back in 2020 and 2021; I remember buying FSAGX because I wanted it to be a substitute to buying literal gold bars or gold nuggets and storing them in my closet. Thus, I technically made a mistake by investing in a precious metals mining and processing fund instead. Once I had that realization, my thirst for knowledge kicked in and I started doing more research.

I ultimately decided on selling my position in FSAGX and buying SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) instead. Unlike FSAGX, GLD actually holds physical gold bars, even though the shareholder ownership is structured as a paper proxy. As an individual retail investor, I can’t exactly “cash in” my shares of GLD in exchange for the aforementioned gold bars, but for my purposes, it seemed like the most reasonable and reliable way to get exposure to the price of physical gold.

FSAGX and GLD are not substantially identical securities, so I did not have to wait for any wash sale periods; the instant I sold FSAGX, I used that money to buy GLD. I’m glad I did, because gold has been skyrocketing throughout 2025, and my decision to buy exposure to gold has been quite a wise financial decision.

Fine art, and other collectibles

In 2022, I participated in StartEngine Collectibles Fund I, LLC’s Regulation A+ offering as a way to gain exposure to fine art and collectibles. Since then, StartEngine has been horrible to work with, and there has been little to no movement or development in their collectibles department. Even just holding onto this investment is just an administrative burden at this point.

I may subject this to the same fate as my shares in Nxu, Inc. (i.e., liquidating them entirely), but until I make that decision and work on executing the logistics of it, I guess this will just sit here collecting dust.

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.