Where do you invest ?

Hello Monkeys,

I am curious what you guys invest your money in. I am sure some of you spend all your salary, but I am sure many of you save/invest some as well.

Do you invest in equities, bonds, other products? Are you saving to invest in real estate, franchise, small business, etc?

I hope to start my career in finance I do plan on putting a big portion of my salary when I am young and don’t need to spend as much into assets that will hopefully pay me back in future years. Curious to hear where you invest and how its going.

Cheers

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"JohnGutfreund" Hello Monkeys,

I am curious what you guys invest your money in. I am sure some of you spend all your salary, but I am sure many of you save/invest some as well.

Do you invest in equities, bonds, other products? Are you saving to invest in real estate, franchise, small business, etc?

I hope to start my career in finance I do plan on putting a big portion of my salary when I am young and don’t need to spend as much into assets that will hopefully pay me back in future years. Curious to hear where you invest and how its going.

Cheers

$SHOP calls and $BYND puts for 50% of my disposable income.

Only half kidding.

On a serious note, I just keep most of my capital in a savings account and occasionally make investments for the long-term into equities I see that have compelling potential for growth.

There are three ways to make money in this business...
 

I pay down my mortgage and invest my bonus in cheap ETFs. We have a fairly good pension scheme at work as well and I have all that in stock-ETFs as well. I also have a small stake in a startup that a friend of mine started.

Keep it simple.

I don't know... Yeah. Almost definitely yes.
 

Well, theoretically, you’re an idiot. I can lever my flat 6-7x with a loan that has negative interest today. There is no way your broker is gonna let you lever up on those terms.

Also, I can’t live in an ETF, but I can live in my flat. I collect yield from it every single day.

I don't know... Yeah. Almost definitely yes.
 

I have it divided between an international ETF (ex. US) from Vanguard and BlackRock's US Equity Factor ETF.

I don't know... Yeah. Almost definitely yes.
 

Im young and a few years out from settling down so I’m all equities and indexes. I’m doing alright for my age so I’m not worried about big swings either. If I followed market sentiment I’d be all cash, but I’m holding everything long term anyways.

Gun rights activist
 

I am roughly half liquid (checking account, regular brokerage) and half illiquid (IRA, 401k, HSA). Within my investments (basically everything but checking and excluding some cash in my brokerage account), I'm 90+% in common stocks and ETFs (and probably 85% of this amount is S&P500 type ETFs), a few percentage points in preferred stocks, and then 4-5% bonds. I'm in my late 20s, so I'm comfortable with that split. Due to a recent bonus, about 20% of my $ is not yet invested. I'm thinking about options to earn better returns as I don't think equity markets are particularly attractive - I think mid single digit annual returns are more likely than high single or low double digit over the next decade. Does anyone have any interesting thoughts other than real estate for my next chunk of money?

 

I think a more important thing for the majority of college students to think about is how to save your money. Namely, opening a Roth IRA is probably the best thing you can do right now (assuming you don't have access to a tax-exempt account like a 401k), considering taxes are probably the lowest they'll ever be in your lifetime.

This is especially important for this forum, since there is a $122,000 income limit for contributing to a Roth; most grads who get into banking or PE will be clearing this in their second, if not first, year. There are things you can do like a backdoor-Roth to get around it, but it'd be ideal to start now to avoid the hassle.

And yes - I understand that not many college kids have savings to contribute to an IRA - but I'm sure there are students here on scholarship who also work part-time, and have some extra income they would like to save. Hopefully someone sees this who can benefit from the advice.

 

I'd chime in by saying that, assuming you started mid-summer, Roth probably makes sense. Since taxes are calculated on a calendar year basis but your salary/bonus cycle will be start-date based, you'll be taxed as if you earned ~$40-45K this year.

This is probably the lowest tax bracket you'll ever be in (assuming you continuously hold a white-collar job) so after-tax is probably more advantageous at least until January.

 

Investment accounts, rental properties, classic cars, my home, various business partnerships, personal commodities account. I am basically 100x levered in a few energy investments right now paying interest only on loans from partners.

 

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