I am an immigrant to the United States of America. My story to this land of opportunity was not hard or arduous, I should thank god I have been blessed. I came to the United States to work as a contract software engineer. I arrived in Boston on a snowy 1st January 1994, very un-prepared for the extreme weather conditions that I would face here. However, it did not take me long to settle down and really start to enjoy my newly adopted country.
As an immigrant I had to be frugal and watch how I spent money. I have always been one of the lucky few with frugal parents. I also always knew that they provided a financial safety net for me well into my adult life. My father had made a hobby of investing in the Indian stock market before I was born and I was determined to out-do his amazing wealth creation model. His model was simple, buy good companies and hold them forever. In fact, it has now been nine years since he has passed, I still own some of the stocks he had purchased 45 years ago and some of them are still worth more than anything individuals I have managed to acquire and maintain over my investing career which has spanned 25 years.
Regardless of my successes and failures in the stock market, the goal of this blog is to chronical my successes, thoughts, learnings and failures such that my kids can learn something from my passion and maybe not make the same mistakes I did.
My Goals:
- Make sure my kids have a college education. College education expenses will start coming in 2023
- I plan to retire at 65 – i.e. Summer of 2034 – Make sure I can comfortably live in retirement using the 4% retirement rule. More on the rule later in this blog
- Make sure my spouse also has a comfortable retirement
My Investing style and strategy
Although I do not think markets will constantly go up, I do believe fixed income investments will continue to have a below average return in the longer term over the next 30 years. This means I refuse to invest in such assets unless the long term rates go up significantly into the 6% to 7% range.
My conservative investment strategies include investing in the S&P500 Index funds, more specifically the FXAIX fund from fidelity and the IVW fund which is beta similar to Fidelity’s contrafund.
My not so conservative strategies include investing in high growth stocks that are key to the 2nd industrial revolution. This would include small highly speculative Biotech plays or up and coming software companies. This includes investments in ARKK and similar strategies.
A small portion of my portfolio will also contain bitcoin and alternate currencies from time to time.
I also make plays in the options market when market conditions warrant the same. This was especially true in the later half of 2020.
Last and by all means not the least, is a percentage investment in Real Estate rental properties. I will talk about these properties from time to time and could consider expanding my portfolio as I see fit.
You will see I have an aggressive investing philosophy and this blog will document how well I do with the strategies I lay out above and how I evolve my thinking over time
The 4% Retirement Rule
I will end this post with a definition of the the 4% rule mentioned above.
One frequently used rule of thumb for retirement spending is known as the 4% rule. It’s relatively simple: You add up all of your investments, and withdraw 4% of that total during your first year of retirement. In subsequent years, you adjust the dollar amount you withdraw to account for inflation