My Own Portfolio

This week I intend to go down the rabbit hole and explain why and when I invested the money that compose my actual portfolio.

This week, I aim to share when my investing journey started and how I got here today, with an actual portfolio composed of a mix of crypto, stocks, ETFs and REITs. While I’ll try to make the reading as simple as possible, bear in mind that some decisions taken along my journey are not easy to explain. I now realize that when I started my investing path I was more like betting or gambling most of the time, and not exactly investing with a long-term mindset. Well, buckle up. Let’s do this.

The year was 2019. I come from quite a modest family in Portugal, and hence finance or investing has never been a Friday night dinner table subject during my youth. My parents had taught me to save but for the sake of saving. The rationale (at least in my head) was that I would eventually need to buy a house. To move from my parents’ place. To get married. Buy a nice car. Save for children. Well, that was it for me.

Live, work, make money, spend money, die (*smoothly introduce dramatic background music here*).

There was no real purpose for saving, besides building a bigger bucket to spend on future expenses.

Until the day I came to realize that we only have a limited number of years on this planet.

Let me use an example to demonstrate what was in my head back in the day to support the above statement.

Imagine you’re saving $500 per month. Saving, not investing. This means this chunk of money would be stored in a little vault at home (ok, ok, in a bank savings account since we’re not living in the 1920s anymore…). Let’s assume there is no inflation, or that the bank pays interest in line with the average inflation rate for the next 50 years.

Now, I started working when I was 23 years old. The retirement age in Portugal is now close to 67. This means 44 years, or 528 months, of active working life with a total saving value of $500 * 528 = $264.000.

Looks ok-ish, right?

Maybe. The issue in my head with this rationale was that I would need to keep working (God forbid any unforeseen life event) and living paycheck to paycheck to achieve a ‘modest’ quantity of $264k during the next 44 years.

There was nothing beyond that.

No possibility of chasing a better or more comfortable life.

Income increase —> increase lifestyle —> getting older —> kids —> bigger house —> more expenses —> that’s it.

That was the moment something has triggered in my head. What do the rich do to increase wealth and their lifestyle? Are they working paycheck to paycheck like a donkey chasing a carrot?

Frustrated about not knowing where to find reasonably good information, I’ve started digging a bit into crypto since we have had a bull run in 2017 and Bitcoin was the word of the day in many coffee conversations.

How I started ‘gambling’ in crypto

Remember when I said I would try to make this story as simple as possible?

Well, there is no real explanation to have started investing in Bitcoin or XRP. After a few weeks of reading and investigating all things blockchain, decentralized digital monies, consensus mechanisms and a couple more technical, but interesting stuff, the decision to invest in crypto was taken. DeFi summer was around the corner and the hype to jump into this new concept of digital tokens and NFT was on, hence the following investments in Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, amongst others.

My current crypto portfolio

Only when the pandemic started, did I realise that what I was actually focused on was on the quick possible returns that crypto could provide. But I hadn’t built a solid foundation if I were to build a future bullet-proof portfolio.

That was the moment I started digging a bit more into readings such as:

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki

• The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel

• The Intelligent Investor, by Benjamin Graham

These books were eye-opening when it comes to sustainable investing. The difference between assets and liabilities (what puts, and what takes money from your pocket), what’s an asset and where and how you can buy them. And of course, the importance of long-term and compounding!

It was, at the end of the day, possible to achieve more.

The image of those $264k being saved during the next 44 years had taken - all of a sudden - another point of view.

My general investing portfolio broken down

Since then, I have been breaking down my portfolio monthly and assigning goals to achieve in the future.

My current plan goes beyond saving money. It moves toward the idea of creating a recurrent passive income based on appreciating assets over time.

My short-term goals are to reduce my crypto and SAP exposure (not by selling these assets, but simply by continuing to contribute regularly to the other classes such as ETFs and the REIT).

The long-term goal is to provide financial stability and protection against unforeseen events in the future, plus allow me more freedom of choice and flexibility when it comes to performing a job I love (i.e. not only spending my time against an activity that generates income).

I would love to hear what you think about my investing strategy and how are you planning your financial freedom in the future.

Feel free to reach out via email or X.