$217K Invested At 27 Years Old | Reacting To Subscriber Portfolios

[00:00:00]So, guys, we are back with another round of portfolio reviews. We've got three really interesting ones on deck today, and we're going to go under the hood to take a look at each one. We'll check out all the holdings. I'll give my honest thoughts on what I like about these portfolios, as well as what I think could be improved. And at the end, I'll tell you which portfolio I personally would invest in if I had to pick just one. So, be sure to stick around for that. At any rate, before we get into it, if you want to have your portfolio reviewed by me in one of these videos, just fill out the form I have linked in the description. And also, leave me a comment below and let me know your thoughts on these portfolios. I'd be very curious to get your feedback, as [music] well.

[00:00:33]All right, guys. Getting into our first portfolio of the day, this one belongs to Tyler, who's been investing for a little while now. He's been at it for somewhere between 6 and 10 years, and hopes to live off dividends sometime in the next decade or two. Now, every single month, Tyler's hitting those contributions pretty hard and is investing $2,500 in his portfolio. And in the notes here, he says, "I'm 27 years old with a wife, two kids, and we own our own home. I plan to live off dividends in my taxable brokerage account by the time I'm between 45 to 50 with paid-off house. I invest $2,500 a month into my taxable and 10% of my income into a Roth 401k through my work, which has a balance of around $120,000 right now." I think that all sounds fantastic so far. Only 27 years old, already owns his own house, and has over $100,000 in his retirement account.

[00:01:17]Tyler's doing great, and as we can see over here in his taxable account, this is pretty impressive, as well. He's sitting on $97,350 in all time. This account is up about 30%. So, he's seeing some very solid gains. And looking at the dividend stats, this account here has about a 2% yield with a 12% dividend growth rate.

[00:01:35]These are pretty solid stats. And so, between this taxable account right here at $97,000 and the Roth 401k, we're looking at a total portfolio value of just over $217,000, which is just incredible for 27 years old. Very impressive. Now, guys, we'll take a look at the rest of Tyler's portfolio in just a moment. But real quick, I wanted to mention that he shared his portfolio with us here using Snowball Analytics, which is actually the sponsor of today's video. This is hands-down my favorite portfolio tracker, and they're actually running a killer sale right now. So, I want to tell you a little bit more about it. One of the most essential tools for any investor is a solid portfolio tracker, and Snowball Analytics is kind of like the Swiss Army knife of portfolio trackers. As you can see, the layout is very clean and intuitive, and the platform is packed with tons of different charts and graphs, which really speaks to just how much data you get, not only when it comes to tracking your portfolio, but also when analyzing stocks as well. I mean, pretty much anything you'd want to know about a company's financials or its dividend history can be found right here within the platform. Now, in my opinion, what really sets Snowball Analytics apart are the features it has specifically designed for dividend investors, and here are a few of my favorites. First off, Snowball shows you your total returns by default throughout the platform, which may sound like a small thing, but it's actually really important for dividend investors because it factors in the income we receive when calculating returns. Along with that, one of my favorite features on the platform is their dividend calendar, which lets you see what companies are paying you each month, when they're paying, and how much they're paying. So, really this gives you a full breakdown of your income every month. And for any stocks you want to keep a close eye on, you can pin them directly to your dashboard through Snowball's new quotes feature, which I've personally gotten a lot of use out of. I've got a few of my watchlist stocks pinned here already, and it's been super handy. Beyond all of that, Snowball also has a community section where you can browse public portfolios from other investors. You can actually see my full portfolio on there as well, including all of my holdings, all of my buys and sells, all my dividend income, and the performance of each position, and I'll include a link to that down below. Overall, if you're looking for a great portfolio tracker, then I highly recommend checking out Snowball Analytics, which you can actually do for free. All you need to do is click the link in the description of the video or in the pinned comment, or just scan the QR code right here on the screen to get a free 14-day trial. And if you like it, you can save 30% on your subscription right now, so time is definitely of the essence. I really love using Snowball Analytics, guys, and I know you will too. So, definitely take advantage of this sale and save 30% on your subscription. All right, guys. Now, getting back to it, looking at Tyler's portfolio, if we scroll down taking a look at all of the holdings here, we can see it really couldn't be more simple and straightforward. There are only two different positions in the taxable account. Two ETFs actually. We have SCHD, which is the Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF, and we also have SPMO, which as we can see right over here is the Invesco S&P 500 Momentum ETF. And a lot of you guys, I'm sure are already with this ETF, but in case you're not, it invests in companies that are within the S&P 500 that have a high momentum score.

[00:04:28]So, basically just consists of companies whose share prices have been seeing some positive momentum. And at this point in time, that's going to consist of companies like Micron, Nvidia, Broadcom, Alphabet, Johnson & Johnson, which has just been on fire this past year, AMD, Lam Research, Intel, and Caterpillar, along with, you know, about 90 other stocks. And I think this is a really solid pairing, SCHD and SPMO, because as we can see, there's hardly any overlap at all between these two ETFs. So, because of that, I think they pair together really well. And to be honest with you, I don't think there's anything that I would change about this portfolio. Maybe you could add like an international ETF, something like VYMI or maybe VXUS. And that seems to be like the only thing missing here, but even that, I don't think that's imperative to have in your portfolio at all. So, with all of that said, Tyler, keep up the great work, my friend. This is a perfect hands-off portfolio, and I really appreciate you letting me check it out.

[00:05:19]All right, guys. Now, moving on to portfolio number two. This one belongs to Jack, who's been investing for somewhere between 1 and 5 years. And Jack has a really long time horizon.

[00:05:27]Now, hoping to live off dividends for another 30-plus years. So, three or more decades. And every single month, Jack's investing $500 into his portfolio. And he tells us in the notes that he is 21 years old and started investing a year and a half ago. He says, "I'm trying to continue growing my portfolio with solid growing companies over time. I plan to keep going in this direction as I have a long time before I will need this money.

[00:05:49]And I'm okay to take on risk with individual companies. So far, all of that sounds pretty good. I think the fact that Jack is investing at all at only 21 years old is just incredible.

[00:05:57]And as we'll see in just a moment, he's picked out some pretty solid companies for his portfolio. Taking a look at that, we're back over here on Snowball Analytics where we can see that Jack has just crossed $16,000 in this portfolio. So Jack, congrats on hitting that and all time this account's doing really well. It's up over 32% very solid gains. And if we look at the dividend stats, very low starting yield, which is not going to be all too surprising once we see the holdings in here. But half a percent there and on the dividend growth side of things, the average dividend growth rate in this portfolio is almost 19%, which is very hefty. Now with that said, if we scroll down taking a look at all of the holdings, there's not too many different positions in this portfolio. We'll organize it from most to least waiting.

[00:06:38]And at the top we have ASML, which makes up a whopping 22% of the portfolio, but it's seen a really solid return. He's doubled his investment with this one. So it's really grown into that large position. But outside of that, we have QQQM. We've got some Broadcom, we have Amazon, S&P Global, Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet and Nvidia. A lot of the usual suspects. And this is going to be no surprise to say, but these are all very solid companies in their own right. And Jack has seen some pretty great returns on most of these so far. So I think that's great job there. The one thing I will say though, in my opinion, this portfolio is way too tech focused.

[00:07:09]Pretty much all of these stocks with the exception of S&P Global right here are going to be tech stocks. Not to mention, these are all holdings that can be found within QQQM. We have Nvidia right here.

[00:07:19]We've got Micron, Microsoft, Amazon, we have Alphabet here. If we scroll down, we've got Meta, Broadcom. And scroll down a little bit more, we can find ASML down here, although it is a pretty small position here in QQQM. So if this were my portfolio, I would probably try to create some more sector diversification.

[00:07:37]Even just adding, you know, a more broadly diversified ETF like an SCHD, even a VYM or even a DGRO, I think could balance out all the tech that's going on in this portfolio. And I think that would benefit it. All in all though, Jack, you could be doing a lot worse, my friend. These are still all great companies at the end of the day. And like I said earlier, just the fact that you're even investing at 21 years old is incredible. That's going to be one of the best decisions you'll ever make. So, keep up the great work, and thank you so much for letting me review your portfolio.

[00:08:07]All right, guys. Now, moving on to our third portfolio of the day, this one belongs to Marcia, who's been investing for somewhere between 1 and 5 years, and she has a decently long time horizon, not hoping to live off dividends for another two to three decades. And every single month, she's investing $800 into her portfolio. Now, in the notes here, Marcia says, "I started investing in the middle of 2024. I want to start slowly, and at the same time, I'm building some confidence. Currently, I'm investing around $830. However, I also have $120,000 in a high-yield savings account at 5%."

[00:08:38]Yeah, I think it's great that you're taking it slow and, you know, building up that confidence. I would probably do the same thing. I wouldn't go super heavy with my contributions either until I felt good about what I was doing. And I think it's great that you have all that dry powder so that when the time is right, you're ready to strike. $120,000 in cash is super impressive. But, over time, you'll definitely want to make sure that you're putting that to work because the compounding power on that amount of money is just incredible. And anyway, looking at Marcia's portfolio here, back over here on Snowball, right now it is sitting at about $16,600.

[00:09:10]In all time, she's up just about 1%.

[00:09:12]Now, looking at the dividend stats here, pretty balanced dividend stats. We're coming in with about a 2.4% yield and a 6 and 1/2% dividend growth rate, not too shabby. Anyway, guys, if we scroll down taking a look at all of the different holdings in this portfolio, this one's going to have the most amount of different positions out of the three portfolios that we've looked at today.

[00:09:29]And I've got to say, I like all of these individual companies. We should recognize pretty much all of these. I like all of the ETFs, and I like that you've established a good foundation of ETFs in this portfolio. If we scroll up just a little bit, it looks like close to 50% of the portfolio is just in funds. With that said, if we click into this category right here, there are six different ETFs in this portfolio, which in my opinion, I think is a bit much.

[00:09:54]I'm of the opinion that you really only need like at most three or four different ETFs max. I definitely think there's room to consolidate here within these ETFs, especially considering, you know, there's SPY and QQQ right over here. But if we look at the overlap, almost all of the holdings that are in QQQ are already in the S&P 500. So, I don't personally think you need to own both. In my opinion, that's one obvious way that you can consolidate here just within the ETF sector. Now, with that said, touching a little bit on your crypto exposure here, you know, 10% of the portfolio, I think that's fine if you want to have some exposure to crypto. I don't think there's anything wrong with 10% or so. However, if we look a bit closer within this category here, crypto has not been kind to you so far. All of your crypto positions are down, some of them down quite a bit.

[00:10:42]XRP, Ethereum, Dogecoin, these ones have been hurting. And I do wonder, you know, at what point do you decide just to cut your losses with some of these like XRP or Ethereum or even Dogecoin and decide to just reinvest them elsewhere in your portfolio. You know, is it worth having $360 locked up in XRP? Does it make sense to have $226 just in Ethereum? Do I really need to have this $11 locked in Dogecoin? Or would all of this money be better invested somewhere else, even just going into Bitcoin for example?

[00:11:11]With all of that said though, even if you just decided to keep things exactly how they are, you'd be just fine. At the end of the day, I still think this is a pretty solid portfolio. And as far as all that cash goes, I don't think it'd be a bad idea to start taking some of that if you're not already and just start dollar cost averaging it into some of these ETFs. If you don't necessarily feel confident with what you're doing, I I don't think you can go wrong just owning more SCHD or owning more SPY.

[00:11:34]These are pretty safe places just to dollar cost average your money into. And you could continue divving it up into these other funds if you really wanted to, but all in all Marcia, you're doing a good job, so keep up the great work and thank you for letting me review your portfolio. And anyway guys, those were our three portfolios of the day and if I had to pick just one of these portfolios to invest in, like if I had to swap my current portfolio with one of these and I couldn't make any changes to these portfolios, I would have to go with Tyler's portfolio. That was the first one that we looked at. And out of the three to me it just seemed to be the most well-balanced and it doesn't get any simpler than just these two ETFs, SCHD and SPMO. This is a perfect hands-off portfolio, so that would be my pick. With that said guys, if you like these portfolios, then you'll definitely want to check out this next video right over here where I'm reviewing three more subscriber portfolios, one of which is a crazy 1.8 million-dollar portfolio that is just thrown off a ton of cash. So, click right over here to check those out and I'll see you in the next one.