Table of Contents

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Introduction

If I was investing for the first time today, above are the 3 things I'd do, in order. Keep in mind how SOON you invest matters more than how MUCH you invest. Google it and you'll see studies on it - even with a 10 year difference.

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Oh also, if you do not have 6 months income saved in CASH (not credit) and/or have significant debt that has an APR over 1%, you MUST kill that debt first. Google Dave Ramsey's "Snowball Method" where you pay off debts from smallest to largest so you can feel a sense of accomplishment right away. I do not recommend #2 and especially number #3 above if have debt outside a mortgage. Credit card debt is debt by the way. 

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Another thing, do NOT check your portfolio every day nor every week. Once a month at the most. It will stress you out and your stock WILL fluctuate. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Type in "Visa stock" on Google and look at the chart. Click on 1-week-view and then click on 5-year-view. Now be quiet and continue reading. 

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ALSO YOU'RE NOT GETTING RICH TOMORROW. My approach is strictly about long term retirement planning. If you want to try to make a ton in a short about of time, it's literally no different than going to Vegas if that's your stupid goal.

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1) 401K Matching

• If you work for an employer who offers 401K matching, contribute the same amount that your company matches. So if they match up to 6% of your paycheck, you will want to contribute 6% of your paycheck. Not taking up your employer on this "matching" is leaving free money. 

• You won't touch this money until 65 I think it is or you'll pay tons of penalties if you try to take it out. You'll probably have to manually type in "6" (for 6% if that's the max) on your company's "Benefits Management" company. Usually it's something like Fidelity or Morgan Stanley or etc.

• After you do that, it'll probably take you to a list of mutual funds. Pick 3-4 and call it a day. They may show percentage growth over 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, or etc. Use common sense and go for what looks good. you will pick 3-4 so its safe. 

  • (Mutual funds are like bundles of stocks. They are safer since your risk is spread out so if one of those stocks tank, you aren't effected as badly, however the reverse is true, if one skyrockets, you won't make as ton. Don't worry because a) nobody really looks at the individual stocks in a mutual fund as they are focused on strategy like "international stocks" or "biotech" etc and b) 99.5% of the time a stock doesn't skyrocket over night. )

• Also when it comes to bonus time, you may want to turn this off but up to you if you want to contribute 6% of your bonus.​

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2) Roth IRA

• So after you set up your 401K, you need to start saving every month to put into a Roth IRA. This is DIFFERENT than a Traditional IRA. Roth IRA growth and withdrawal doesn't get taxed assuming you don't withdraw before 59.5 years of age. If you do, you pay tons of penalties. I think you can lose up to 40% but Google it because I could be off but I know you lose a decent chunk. 

• Think of Roth IRA as a book cover to a bunch of stocks you'll pick later.

• There are many places you can do it through but I use Fidelity.com

• The maximum you can contribute to a Roth is $6,000 in 2020. (You know something has to be good if the government puts a limit on how much you can contribute to it. 

• Also you can only do a Roth IRA if your Modified Adjusted Gross Income is under $139K for a single person or $206K if you're married and filing jointly.

• After you set it up, you need to pick a few stocks. My stock selections are below. 

• Pick 3-4 and call it a day. 

• Really try to add to it monthly because we are humans and we delay or procrastinate. You want to get into a behavior or habit of tucking money away.

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3) Investing at will

• So if you are at this point you have​​

  • Maxed out your 401K contribution​

  • Maxing out your Roth IRA

  • You do not have any debt outside a mortgage

  • You have 6 months of income saved in CASH. (Keep in mind what COVID did to the country and how 16 million folks are out of work as of July 2020. Unemployment money is NEVER a guarantee and can be a complicated and timely process.)

• Congrats to getting to this point. Seriously. Its a big deal and its obvious you are on top of your shit. I can't stress it enough and will honestly buy you food if this is a recent event to celebrate. This is a BIG BIG deal.

• At this point is where you have maxed out your investment options that have limits so now you're on your own.

• Download the Robinhood app. It's a much easier interface than Fidelity and Robinhood currently does't offer Roth IRA. Also you learn so much from the way Robinhood presents information. I did.

• It's really intuitive and when you look up stocks, you see so much information.

• VERY VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: I know I've primarily talked about stocks only but the closer you are to retirement the more conservative your investments shoudl be which means you should have more mutual funds than stocks. The last thing you need is to be impacted by a dive in the market right before you are ready to retire. If you utilize Google or text me, you can find some strong solid mutual funds. Again mutual funds are groups of stocks. For example a bank mutual fund could comprise of a few national and a few regional banks. Mutual funds are hedged much more from declines in the marketing but also goes for upswings in the marketing. 

• Again you always want to have a minimum of 3-4 stocks to begin with. DIVERSITY IS ONE OF THE PILLARS OF SMART INVESTING. For example if you have $50K, I'd recommend having 8-12 stocks. Some may say more, some may say less but if one crashes, you won't get burned. You also don't want too many where you don't get the true gains of the stocks you carefully choose because you have so many. 

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List of stocks

• The stocks below are stocks I invest in heavily for LONG TERM PLANNING. If you enter their stock symbol on Google and click on their 5-year-view, you'll see a nice steady incline.

• You will NOT see semi risky stocks either such as Tesla or whatever stocks are in the news these days. Yes I have those but I refuse to share those due to risk those carry, even if minor. I care you about you so much I refuse to share those.

• Below are stocks I do not foresee myself selling for 10-20 years minimum unless a game changer like Amazon.com comes along in their industry. So if you lose all your money in one of the stocks below tomorrow due to insane internal corruption, then we'll be in the same boat. But it'll be OK because you are DIVERSIFIED. 

• I will block you if you text me about bitcoin or some random stock you saw on the news but know nothing about.

• Yes I am aware popular consumer brands like NIKE, Target, Coca-Cola, etc. aren't on my list. There's a reason they aren't on my list. If you want to invest in them, that's up to you. Do your research. I'm sure there are stocks out there with a LONG TERM historical track record of good performance. Then you text me and tell me what stock you discovered.

• Stocks usually go up/down when companies do their Earning's Call which occurs 4x a year. A stock could have AMAZING results in sales and profits but still decline that day because bank analysts had higher expectations. I've seen this a million times. This is why the list below are stocks that have a LONG history of growth not just 6 months or 1 year.

• I also have a few mutual funds but I didn't mention those below. Those grow/decline slower than volatile stocks.

• Funds - if you dont want to deal with stocks just pick these funds. Much less work and you're looking an unofficial ROI of minimum 15%. Much safer and stable:

  • SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF - SPY or VOO - any S&P fund is fine

  • VITAX -  Vanguard Information Technology Index Fund Admiral Shares

  • QQQ - This is a great mutual fund to start with as it's made of stocks like Apple, Telsa, Microsoft, etc