I'm really looking forward to sharing with you my views on a wide range of Personal Finance in the future. I'm going to share some specifics about my portfolio and my chosen strategies, but for now, let's talk in general terms.
Most people already know that there is inherent risk in any investment, and this risk needs to be mitigated, particularly when your investing horizon is short. For this reason, the advice you see online most often will recommend a portfolio of bonds and ETFs based on your timeline. This works well for most people, but I think this advice ignores what is often a major portion of the average persons portfolio: Real Estate.
Because a significant amount of money, (I'll share the specifics a little later), goes towards my mortgage, I like to consider that a part of my portfolio. In fact, I consider my mortgage to be my only fixed income investment, despite having a relatively short, (15 year), time horizon. This is in part because if the market drops significantly between now and my first chance at retirement, I can easily delay leaving my Federal Service job, delay drawing down my savings, pick up another job, or a combination of the 3. This allows me to feel comfortable investing 100% of my savings into Equities and Equity ETFs without taking an unnecessary risk. Ideally, this also means that I should be able to maximize my rate of return over the next 15 years. The question of what specifically to invest in is another, more challenging topic that I'll try and cover in detail in another post.
