Investing Priorities
We already know that a savings account is yielding at best 1% this day and age. With that in mind how is that helping you obtain financial freedom? It is no | February 12, 2014 by Wall Street Playboys
In our overview on How to Invest as a Bachelor and Part two outlining how to obtain a high paying job we’re continuing down the journey to financial success and the message remains the same:
You must invest.
We already know that a savings account is yielding at best 1% this day and age. With that in mind how is that helping you obtain financial freedom? It is not. In fact you are going broke. This article could not have come at a better time as Janet Yellen recently took over the Fed and stated the following:
“Inflation remained low as the economy picked up strength, with both the headline and core personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, price indexes rising only about 1 percent last year, well below the FOMC’s 2 percent objective for inflation over the longer run. Some of the recent softness reflects factors that seem likely to prove transitory, including falling prices for crude oil and declines in non-oil import prices.”
Take a quick pause for a moment and re-read the quote above.
Now that we understand the Fed intends to increase inflation since they believe it was 1 percent… this means you are going to become poorer if your money is invested at a paltry 1 percent. Instead of complaining about the changes and the printing of money the only solution is to take massive action by becoming an intelligent investor.
Backdrop: So we avoid all the Suzy Orman type comments, we are going to make the following extremely dangerous assumption: You are responsible and can control your emotions. If you check off both of these boxes you’re already in the top 10% of the USA in the first place. With that out of the way and the assumption that you have a high cash flow career we’ll take a walk through a high level personal capital allocation policy.
Priority One
We move from left to right in each priority. Assuming you have some debt (ideally not much due to intelligent decisions) your first order of business is to get the Company match, get rid of debt for psychological reasons and lower your tax rate with additional 401K investments.
Company Match: This is free money. Even if the rate on your debt is 10% there is no way you will ever find an investment opportunity that yields 100% returns upon investment. This means you have literally doubled your money on day one. While the Company match may be small at 3%, that is still $3,000 of free money on the table assuming you make $100,000 per year. It is much more financially irresponsible to forget the match than it is to have a small debt load.
Paying Down Debt: If you have a mountain of debt, you likely need to adjust your strategy by finding a debt specialist to pay it off in a one time sum or have a piece of it forgiven. With that said if the amount is relatively small, then pay it off quickly so you can have more mobility with your credit score. A high credit score means better access to credit. Credit scores are just as important as your GPA out of college.
401K for Lowering Taxes: Always pay the least in taxes, an obvious choice. When you’re close to 6 figures or when you eventually approach $200K+ in income, you want to make sure you defer those tax payments since your bracket increases. In addition, a savvy reader will realize we prefer 401K tax avoidance to $10K liquid from the get go. Why? If an emergency occurs you can always tap into your 401K in a real world disaster. In addition, the extra 401K contributions are unlikely going to break the bank since the goal is to simply lower yourself to the next bracket. Sticking with the $100K example, you want to get your bracket to $89,350 according to the 2014 single taxpayer bracket. If you are nearing $200K, well jump down to $186,350, so on and so forth.
Priority Two:
Priority one should be taken care of quickly. At this point you are in the lowest tax bracket according to 401K manipulation and you are ready to build a personal financial profile as well. In addition, you’re looking to build personal wealth that is untied to your Company. Finally, you should be looking at a possible credit facility in the future for low rates on debt for leverage.
$10,000: This is simply a number that we’ve derived from personal experience. As soon as you have $10,000 in the bank there is no reason to have any more in a savings or checking account. Lets run through the math quickly.
Assuming you can live on $3,000 a month this means the savings account already has you covered for 3 months and 1 week. In addition, you’re never going to quit a job. You either get laid off and get unemployment or you quit for a new job. Assuming unemployment benefits are roughly $1,800 a month, that is another $5,400 as you eat into savings. Quick math below:
($10,000 + (1,800*3))/3,000 = 5.133 months.
Assuming you’re a hard working person 5 months is more than enough time to find a new job.
Dollar Cost Averaging: We have already talked about this investment strategy but it bears repeating. In 30 years will companies be larger? Will things be more expensive? Will the Equity and Debt Markets be higher? In that case you know your money should be working for you instead of burning a hole in your pocket at 1% losses since the Fed intends to increase the rate of inflation. Finally, notice we try to avoid stock picking and fund advice because 1) we have no idea what will happen to the global economy on a day to day basis and 2) we have no interest in becoming financial advisors.
Credit Facility: Now we’re getting to the good stuff. Your portfolio is growing and you have momentum. At this point you should be receiving terrible financial advice from everyone pitching you to do X and Y with your money. This is when you know you have momentum. Instead of allowing them to steer your future you slowly build up an insanely high credit rating. You have churned a few cards and are now locked into a pair of good credit cards and one for your credit history. Start manipulating your credit rating to 800+.
Priority Three:
Now we’re starting to see the benefits of all the trees we’ve planted. You’re no longer fighting against price increases since you’re an asset owner with total assets well eclipsing your annual pay. You’re getting richer. You’ve got a credit score that would surprise every bank if you walked in and needed a loan. Time to diversify.
Cover Rent: While you’re manipulating your credit rating from the end of priority two you should have a system for tracking your passive income. If you’re banking on bond yields, dividends or rental income you should have a personal database that tracks each cash flow. When this number covers your rent you can now consider leverage if the rate is low and the opportunity is low risk and slightly higher yield.
Credit Facility: We are considering a live update of how to utilize debt but for now we’ll keep it high level. Run the debt load where you have a 3x debt to return ratio and you are generally in a safe position. As a simplistic example since we receive numerous emails on real estate if you are able to pick up a 15 year mortgage at 3% and the cap rate on your real estate investment is 9% (assuming you’re buying for rental income) then you should be in a good position. With a 30%+ down payment the 3% rate is achievable and your tenants should be paying your entire mortgage for you, perhaps even more.
Equities and Debt: At this point you have a relatively large and mixed portfolio. You’re invested across all asset classes but it is a good idea to take a look and consistently rebalance. If your career is firing on all cylinders and you have large amounts of cash flow you can continue with a heavy skew to equities. This is because a market correction of 25% would leave you unphased. On the flip side, if you’re unwilling to lose 25% in your equity portfolio it is time for a change.
Priority Four:
We’re at the final stages of your journey and you should be a mature investor. A market decline of 5% in a few weeks (what happened in January) should leave zero emotional toll on your mind and body. You simply don’t care about market movements with regards to the dollar cost averaging piece of your portfolio. Again, you are not phased one bit. In addition, if you’ve built a meaningful career, have read 100s of books and have strong relationships for liens of debt… You can consider a few bigger ticket items.
Cover Expenses: When most people talk about location independent income all they mean is they want to live a normal life in any city in the world. They simply want to see cash flow surpass expenses. That is it. By the time you have appropriately readjusted your portfolio and have access to cheap debt we are guessing you’re approaching this threshold. Instead of getting into high risk ventures keep your eye on the relaxation point (cash flow = expenses) and ignore higher risk items for now.
Higher Risk: At this point you should have a niche. You should know one area better than anyone your age and anyone 10 years your senior. That is the benchmark and there is no getting around it. If you’re not an expert… the entire high risk category should be thrown out of the window. High risk includes: Private Equity, Seed Funding, Mezzanine Funding, Bridge Loans, Angel Investing and individual equity or junk bonds.
Private Investments: While private equity is technically a private investment those that are familiar with high finance know the distinction, in this case we’re referring to silent investments. Unlike an actual Private Equity deal where you may have some say in the process in a silent or private investment you’re simply pooling assets with a group of investors and you are investing in a project.
Scribe Note: comments
can you elaborate more on what a good pair of credit cards will be? examples would be great.
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Wall Street Playboys says
February 14, 2014 at 1:30 am
Miles or cash?
Generally 2-5% cash back is good
Miles will depend on where you are located because of airline choice for work where it will stack.
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Bonus Week says
February 13, 2014 at 10:06 pm
Any ways to lower your tax burden when it comes to bonuses?
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Wall Street Playboys says
February 14, 2014 at 1:10 am
Ha, unfortunately no. If you want a riskier approach just dump your entire bonuse into the 401K at one time. Meaning no contributions through the year and then just max it out on bonus day so you get the cash flows earlier and $17K is not 100% of bonus.
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Bonus Week says
February 14, 2014 at 3:38 am
Actually, that reminds me of another question I had.
I know you guys suggest investing your annual bonus, but should you spread out your investments over the next year with dollar cost averaging, or is it better to just dump the money into the market on day one so you’re not tempted to buy a Ferrari with all that left over cash.
Wall Street Playboys says
February 14, 2014 at 4:22 am
“You can spend your base salary on strippers & blow, but save your bonus”
As long as the net savings amount is about the same wont make a major difference.
No one gets rich with a 401k anyway we only post that stuff because people ask about it. If your personal trading account is smaller than your 401K account and you have a front office role on Wall Street… You’re doing something wrong.
Jm says
July 5, 2014 at 3:41 am
I’m self employed, don’t have a 401k and don’t get bonuses, am I s.o.l?
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Wall Street Playboys says
July 7, 2014 at 4:29 pm
Self employed has 10x more options. You’re going to have to do your own due diligence but you can set up your own company to create your own 401K plan.
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Middle says
September 4, 2014 at 3:54 am
Do you include total return in the “cover rent” for a good level to utilize debt in priority 3? Most my investments are in stocks so I’m wondering if I should do (Yearly Rent)/7% or (Yearly Rent)/2-3%, being estimated total return vs dividends/bond coupons. The 7% isn’t true passive “income” but if I’m not spending it and the leverage is being paid for by tenants, it’s essentially the same thing.
Thanks for pointing me to this column.
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Wall Street Playboys says
September 4, 2014 at 12:23 pm
Rent/return.
401K money does not count, that at minimum should be tax adjusted. Ie: $10K in a 401K is really 7K.
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Wall Street Playboys says
September 4, 2014 at 12:39 pm
To be crystal clear here, you can choose anything to solve the equation we have. If you want to be aggressive, go for it but we would disagree.
3-5% maximum long-term rate of return to be safe (opinion)
James Strikes Again says
February 22, 2015 at 5:56 pm
I am paying $80 a month in interest for a balance of 20k. Peanuts. Definitely not going to pay this loan down quite yet.
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Wall Street PlayboysWall Street Playboys says
February 22, 2015 at 6:13 pm
That is close, would pay it off though.
If it was 3% or lower then maybe let it float, 4% is really 6% returns on a pretax basis so…
Just get rid of it. If you’re smart and living a minimal lifestyle (no need to flash cash at the age of 23) then you can get rid of it in a few short months.
Good work!
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REM says
February 25, 2015 at 8:43 pm
Ok, similar question as James but wondered if you had a different take. So I just got a $100,000 bonus and the only debt I have to speak of is the mortgages on my 2 rental properties (both at 4% interest). After maxing out my 401K and IRA, do I: 1) pay off one of the mortgages, 2) invest the money, or 3) do a little of both. Paying off the mortgage would instantly free up a lot of cash every month. The downside being the lost mortgage interest deduction and the opportunity cost of locking in a paltry 4% return over the next 30 years vs. a much higher return (potentially). Thoughts?
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Wall Street PlayboysWall Street Playboys says
February 25, 2015 at 8:54 pm
risk free = pay it off
Risk on = invest it
Not something we can answer becuase your rental income may cover the mortgage so we don’t know your situation. Good luck!
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LA Investor says
March 13, 2016 at 6:43 pm
I’ve been following the principles in this post and “how to invest like a bachelor” for the past 2-3 years. I was slow to start (sub 100K until mid 20’s) but have ramped hard since then and am on track to hit 2M by late 30’s with upside potential.
The strange thing is, when friends of mine (who now ask for advice/opinions on investing) hear this plan to retire or plan to retire by 40 they start to seem offended and come up with lots of reasons why this won’t work.
“You can’t assume 7% returns in this days environment”
“That doesn’t factor in inflation”
“Tax laws make this plan of yours much more complicated than you would think”
etc.
Funny stuff……
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Wall Street PlayboysWall Street Playboys says
March 13, 2016 at 6:45 pm
Making an excuse is always easier than making money.
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Jay says
October 30, 2018 at 9:40 am
In faq you mentioned that if you have less than $1m, it’s not worth investing and it’s better spent on starting an online business. So which is correct? That advice or the advice outlined here?
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Wall Street PlayboysWall Street Playboys says
October 31, 2018 at 12:48 am
No change. Why ask when the answer is already there? Don’t get it
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Jay says
October 31, 2018 at 5:27 pm
In this article it stresses dollar cost averaging and makes no mention of investing in a biz, so I just wanted to check which info is more relevant.
Wall Street PlayboysWall Street Playboys says
November 2, 2018 at 6:16 pm
biz not even close covered a million times