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Why You Should Diversify Your Investments

May 3, 2018 by Cubert

Wall Street VTSAX Shopping

This post covers how we spread our risk with Vanguard VTSAX index funds and real estate. Today you’ll come away with a bit more knowledge about the importance of asset diversification.

How cool is that? I’m going to share how freaking easy it is to invest with diversity when you keep it simple and focus on wealth building.

Several very helpful books and blogs* have helped inform and shape my strategy. The test of time and persistence has shown that this approach WORKS. The reason you won’t find many posts on investing here at Abandoned Cubicle? I did not create this blog as a sleep aid…

Investing is boring. Period. And for good reason: Building wealth is a long-term process that requires you to keep your meddling hands off the wheel. In the spirit of transparency, and to help inform you fine readers of how I’ve managed to reach key financial milestones, we’ll lay out the goods. It’ll be short, sweet, to the point, and only marginally boring. Promise.

 

How I Diversify My Investments

Let’s start with a look at where our money is currently invested. A simple pie-chart reveals a heavy lean on real estate, with a still sizable chunk in boring but effective index funds. Note: I like to refer to pie charts as “cheese wheels”, as a shout-out to a cheesy blogging friend over in Holland.

 

What Does It Mean to Diversify Your Portfolio?
What does it mean to diversify your portfolio? It means avoiding putting all of your eggs in one basket. Real estate and small businesses should be part of your mix!

 

Now in fairness, you could lop-off about 50% off the current real estate distribution, because we owe a LOT to the bank still. However, by the time we reach our early 60s, we will have fully paid off our house, and the rental mortgages as well.

Not more than five years ago, before we started our adventures in being a landlord and owning an Airbnb hospitality business, we had a more inverse picture. Most of our assets were invested in the stalwart 401K, with the rest representing equity in our home.

With real estate rentals, the idea is to hold property and, well, rent them out. You start getting silly and selling units, and the IRS will come after you for all that depreciation you’d been accumulating to lower your taxes. At any rate, consider the pie graph a current snapshot of assets, exclusive of liabilities. THIS is our nest egg.

 

Where We Put Our Money

Here’s the easy part of the exercise. More than 90% of our equity investments are plain old 401K contributions. I know, sexy, right? Here’s the distribution pie-chart:

What Does It Mean to Diversify Your Portfolio?

 

As for where the money is distributed within the big blue Fidelity account? It’s 100% going into the Vanguard Institutional Index Fund Institutional Plus or VIIIX instrument – very similar to VTSAX. The expense ratio is the lowest of any fund in those offered by our company’s plan: 0.02%, or 20 cents per $1,000 invested. I can live with that.

Courtesy of Fidelity, here’s the verbatim Strategy of this handsomely profitable fund:

The fund employs an indexing investment approach designed to track the performance of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, a widely recognized benchmark of U.S. stock market performance that is dominated by the stocks of large U.S. companies. The advisor attempts to replicate the target index by investing all, or substantially all, of its assets in the stocks that make up the index, holding each stock in approximately the same proportion as its weighting in the index.

The five-year return has been handsome indeed: 12.94%. The historical lifetime return is a very healthy 9.83%. This is why, good readers, when I show you analyses of opportunity cost, I take that 9.83%, round it up to 10%, and lop-off 3% for inflation. Hence, the “7% inflation-adjusted returns on low fee index funds.”

 

Tax-Advantaged Accounts

They’re quite similar. The mighty Health Savings Account (HSA) allows us to invest all funds saved beyond $3,000 in a variety of 401k-like vehicles. We’re fortunate that our HSA Bank offers the Vanguard 500 Index Fund “Admiral Shares (VFIAX.)”

Normally you’d need at least $10,000 invested directly with Vanguard to pick the Admiral versions. These are simply the lowest fee rate shares Vanguard offers. With our HSA, we didn’t need 10 grand to pick this fund, though we have it now. And we are certainly not shy about taking advantage of the 500 Index Admiral Shares nice, low 0.04% expense ratio.

At some point, our traditional and Roth IRAs (direct with Vanguard) will reach the $10K minimum and we’ll convert those to VFIAX or VTSAX as well. Those funds, plus the Fidelity 529 accounts, form the basis for our kids’ college money. Should they choose to apply themselves in school as their mom did, and not be a goof-off like their old man.

 

Diversify by Spreading Your Risk

A healthy chunk of the first cheese wheel, the green slice, represents Mrs. Cubert’s business. To be clear, you don’t need to own a business to dominate the world with your investments. You can easily make it rain with 100% of your cheese wheel in either equities or real estate. And if your business happens to be bullet-proof and highly profitable, you could rely 100% on that too.

We simply have a business because of my wife’s chosen profession as a chiropractor. How to value her practice is tricky, but I’ve managed to figure it out roughly, based on monthly revenues achieved over time.

Our real estate holdings are for practical purposes also a “business”, but it’s a very passive business, especially compared to the day-to-day service-oriented nature of Mrs. Cubert’s shop. Granted, the Airbnb Experiment has been a bit less passive than long-term rentals. But at most, I type a few messages to guests every other day, for all of 5-10 minutes.

So, what does it mean to diversify your portfolio? If you’re lazy, go with Vanguard S&P 500 index funds (VTSAX) at 100%. If you’re like to hustle, go 50% Vanguard, 50% real estate. Now I lay me down to sleep to dream about vacations to Costa Rica or Switzerland. Rent check just arrived? Great. Call me in the fall when it’s time to clear out the gutters.

  • Helpful Books include A Random Walk Down Wall Street, by Burton G. Malkiel, and of course, most recently, This is the Year I Put My Financial Life In Order, by John Schwartz.
  • Helpful Blogs include JL Collins, GoCurryCracker, and Mad Fientist

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Previous Post: « This Is the Year I Put My Financial Life in Order
Next Post: How to Retire Early With SemiFIRE »

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Comments

  1. Mrs. Kiwi says

    May 7, 2018 at 6:02 am

    We are basically following JL Collins simple path to wealth formula where we get to nicely ignore our money and let it grow. Investing so much more fun when you don’t have to pay attention to it.

    Reply
    • Cubert says

      May 7, 2018 at 6:23 am

      A-men, sister! I wish I could say the same thing about my lawn. Alas…

      Reply
  2. Tread Lightly, Retire Early says

    May 6, 2018 at 8:40 am

    I love these visuals. Now I think I need to make some cheesy wheels of my own. We’re heavy in real estate over in these parts as well.

    Reply
    • Cubert says

      May 6, 2018 at 8:54 am

      I appreciate your comment, Angela. I think it’d help to put more of these types of exhibits in my posts. Course, I’ve been straying a bit from the “money analysis” types of posts, so gotta pick my spots!

      Reply
  3. Miguel (The Rich Miser) says

    May 4, 2018 at 7:10 pm

    Hey Cubert,

    I’m an S&P 500 guy as well, with retirement investments. However, with non-retirement accounts, I live a little dangerously, buying and selling stocks and bonds every few months. I also have 10% of our portfolio in cryptocurrencies.

    So far, so good. I hope those aren’t my “famous last words”.

    Cheers,
    Miguel

    Reply
    • Cubert says

      May 5, 2018 at 5:58 am

      Miguel!
      Keep on sharing how your journey goes with the individual stocks/bonds and crypto. Readers can learn more on RichMiser.com, right?
      Remember that wager Warren Buffet had a few years back – seems very few wanted to take him on to actively outperform the S&P 500.
      Good luck!!!
      Cubes

      Reply
  4. Jon Baron says

    May 4, 2018 at 12:26 pm

    Cubert,
    Boring! And that is the point. Most sound, effective investing techniques are boring (index fund investing, rental properties, etc).
    It is the exciting ones you hear about that cause problems and give other investments a bad name (bitcoin, day trading, speculating with real estate prices).
    The problem is convincing a person just beginning their work career to put money aside into these “boring” investments when everyone has that one friend who doubled his money on (insert risky investment here).

    -Jon

    Reply
    • Cubert says

      May 4, 2018 at 12:59 pm

      Great point, Jon. Case in point? Crypto-currencies!

      Reply
  5. Doc G says

    May 4, 2018 at 8:41 am

    Amen brother. Amen! Keep it simple.

    Reply
    • Cubert says

      May 4, 2018 at 10:42 am

      The choir has sung and preacher has preached! ?

      Reply
  6. Jason@WinningPersonalFinance says

    May 3, 2018 at 2:27 pm

    What a great boring cheesy post. You may not have gone into the deep end with this one but you show how simple investing can be!

    Reply
    • Cubert says

      May 3, 2018 at 2:29 pm

      Ha! Best complement all week. Thanks, Jason!!!

      Reply
  7. JoeHx says

    May 3, 2018 at 12:34 pm

    I do the total stock market (VTSAX, I think) which is more or less a superset of the S&P 500. I also have a small amount in total bond market (VBMFX). The only decent options in my 401k are target retirement funds. No real estate right now, but I do have some business income.

    Reply
    • Cubert says

      May 3, 2018 at 1:56 pm

      Hi JoeHx! I like VTSAX too – especially based on what JL Collins has written on that fund. Will likely put out residual income in early retirement in VTSAX. Need 10k minimum still, right?

      Reply
      • NWA-non says

        May 4, 2018 at 11:20 am

        Right, $10k min for the Admiral funds. You can get to the same ETFs though with the same ER as the Admiral funds and avoid the more expensive Investor funds, if you don’t have a chunk of $10k lying around.

        The Stock Series by Mr. Collins should be a mandatory read for each and every person new to investing; and brushed up on every few years 🙂

        Reply
        • Cubert says

          May 4, 2018 at 11:48 am

          Good point on ETFs! Exchange Traded Funds are worth a look if you want to time things a bit – not my game at this point.

          Reply
  8. Young FIRE Knight says

    May 3, 2018 at 8:06 am

    I think the best way to invest is just to keep it simple. A lot of people get too intimidated when investing by all the potential choices there are. Index funds are the way to go for those not sure of where to start!

    Index and chill (totally need to make that phase a thing!)

    Reply
    • Cubert says

      May 3, 2018 at 8:26 am

      Young Jedi. I love the idea – trademark that Index and Chill phrase! ?

      Reply
    • Joe says

      May 3, 2018 at 11:55 am

      Yeap, the KISS principle is a great thing. Our investment is too complicated at this point and I’d like to simplify over the next 10 years. By the time our son goes off to college, it should just be index funds. Rentals are great, but they cause headaches.

      Reply
      • Cubert says

        May 3, 2018 at 1:54 pm

        Oh come on Joe! Rentals aren’t THAT bad… just depends on what type of property, where the property is located, and some healthy tenant vetting. Oh, and a little elbow grease from time to time. ?

        Reply
  9. Ms ZiYou says

    May 3, 2018 at 7:52 am

    Sounds like your world domination is going well – on autopilot even.

    Another vote for boring investing – sexy is overrated.

    Reply
    • Cubert says

      May 3, 2018 at 8:23 am

      Agree, Ms Z.! Sexy is overrated, unless you sport a mohawk and go by J. Money! ?

      Reply
  10. Tom @ Dividends Diversify says

    May 3, 2018 at 7:12 am

    Most of the investing battle is having a plan and sticking to it. Nice work on that front. But, my real question is can I get some wine to go with those cheese wedges? All this investment talk has gotten me thirsty. Tom

    Reply
    • Cubert says

      May 3, 2018 at 8:22 am

      Right on! Course, a good education on dividend investing might be enlightening, if I get too bored of Index. ?

      Reply

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CubertTired of the cubicle grind? Does retirement seem so elusive that you feel trapped? If so, let’s talk! Grab some popcorn, and follow Cubert’s journey. Serving up juicy anecdotes and more since September, 2016.

Check out the full post archive spanning early retirement, personal finance, real estate investing, Airbnb hosting, and cubicle survival.

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