Investments

Since I have a finance degree, my mom has always been bugging me to invest her money. However, I am very risk adverse and my work has basically been budgeting and planning for companies. I only started doing some investments after working in Treasury, but the company’s investment strategy is also very conservative.

For the past 10+ years now, I’ve give a bit of money to an accountant friend who also does financial planning. The thought is to earn some investment income but also look for ways to reduce taxes. I don’t think he’s been too successful on the tax target since it seems like I’m paying a lot of taxes. Over the ~10 years, he’s probably averaged 10% returns post fees. Not bad, but in comparison, the S&P 500 averaged about 12% gains annually. I could have done better if I just bought SPY ETF with the money I gave him.

Since I’m working part time now, and I’m starting to really plan for retirement, I’ve been looking at the investments I have position in and trying to understand the mutual fund market. To start, my mom is giving me about 10% of her retirement to invest. Right now it’s almost all in cash, making 0.80%. I started with an account at Robinhood but heard it’s not a great choice for research so I opened another account at Fidelity. I then picked out some funds that seem interesting. I think I’m going concentrate on a bond fund, and a stock index fund. Still debating whether to buy SPY for the stock portion of the portfolio, or go with a Fidelity mutual fund.

I’ll probably also take some cash and open an account for myself. I want to see if I can outperform a “professional” in picking mutual funds or justify his 1.5% fees. If this works out, maybe I can just day trade as part of retirement. Just kidding.