Former Financial Advisor: “Do Not Buy A House!” Do THIS Instead! | Humphrey Yang

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 0:59Speaker 02

  What I'm going to tell you right now is going to be very different.

• 1:02Marina Mogilko?

  What are the worst decisions people can make with their money in 2025?

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Right now, I don't have that cash. It's all fully in the market.

• 1:08Marina Mogilko?

  How do you stay sane when the market goes down?

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Ideally, I just keep all that money in the investing portfolio forever.

• 1:14Marina Mogilko?

  Let's talk about crypto.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Oh, I have a 5X. I want a 10X.

• 1:17Marina Mogilko?

  How complex everything is.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  People saying you should sell everything.

• 1:20Marina Mogilko?

  And you do the same for your meme coin strategy, right?

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Not financial advice.

• 1:24Marina Mogilko?

  Hey, guys. Welcome to Silicon Valley Girl. It looks like 2025 is going to be a wild ride for everyone who is interested in investing, starting a business, anything to do with finance. So today, we have a financial expert here, Humphrey, who we're going to talk to about building wealth in 2025, mistakes you can make with your money in 2025, like general wealth building advice. Because I feel like for a lot of young people, it looks like 2025 could be a great year to start building wealth, especially when you see markets growing. It's like, it's a good place to start, right?

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:00Marina Mogilko?

  Everything's falling.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:02Marina Mogilko?

  Let's talk about that. Can we start with like a general budgeting strategy for people in 2025? How much you save? How much you invest?

• 2:11Speaker 02

  I'd like to say for most people that they should try to aim to save 20% of their income if they can. If they can do more, that's great. But most people, I think the average personal savings rate in the United States is about 4%. So if you can get up to 10, 15, 20%, that gives you a lot more flexibility. And that will help you save and invest more in the long run.

• 2:30Marina Mogilko?

  When you say save, like, okay, I'm putting aside 10%, does it stay as cash or does it go into a high-yield savings account? What would be the strategy there?

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would stockpile some cash until you have at least three to six months of an emergency fund saved up. So if your monthly expenses are $2,000 a month, that's what you need to live. You should at least save $6,000 or up to $12,000. Put that away, put that aside, that's high-yield, put it in a high-yield account. You don't touch that money, that's just for emergencies. And then anything else you make on top of that and you can save, then you should invest that. That's the general guideline, yeah.

• 3:06Marina Mogilko?

  What should be the investment strategy for someone who's just starting out?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so investment strategy super depends on the person's risk tolerance and their time horizon. So if they need the money next year, I probably wouldn't say you should invest. Because let's say you need, let's say you need money for a wedding, right? And you know you're going to spend money on the wedding. If you invest that money and it goes down in value, you would probably feel pretty bad about it. And if you can't afford your wedding when you want to afford your wedding, that's not going to be good. Let's say your time horizon is 40 years. So you want that money to be your retirement money. Then in that case, invest all you want and you don't have to worry too much about it. Kind of put it into the market and forget about it. For most people, so I'm going to get to the, what you should invest in now.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  For most people, I think ETFs are pretty solid and those are just exchange traded funds. That just means you're buying one fund and within that one fund, it encompasses, let's say, 500 other stocks within that fund. So by buying that one fund, you are buying literally 500 stocks all at once.

• 4:07Marina Mogilko?

  Do you just buy that fund or is there a split? Like it has to be like a 20% international, an ETF that tracks Bitcoin, right? We just have these. What would the, the strategy be there? Let's talk about long-term, let's talk about like 10 years.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  So there are a lot of ETFs. You don't just buy a random ETF. You typically want to buy an S and P 500 ETF. That's the US stock market. You can balance it out with international ETFs. So the rest of the world has a ETF called, uh, I think it's like all world minus US. So basically it's like every, it's like every other stock in the world besides the United States. So you could do that. And then you could also balance it with bonds.

• 4:46Marina Mogilko?

  What's the percentage?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, so a typical percentage, let's say you wanted a three fund portfolio, which is a very famous portfolio. It's, um, a lot of people online like the three fund portfolio because it's very well balanced as well as it does well in times of prosperity, but doesn't have as much downside risk. Uh, the, the typical split on a three fund portfolio is something like 50% in US stocks, 25 to 30% in international stocks, and then the rest would be bonds. But sometimes bonds for a younger investor is not risky enough. So that's something you kind of have to balance and weigh with yourself. Like if you're a riskier type of investor, you might do more in US stocks.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Cause US stocks are probably, they have the greatest potential for upside, but they could also go down too. Same thing with international stocks, yeah.

• 5:39Marina Mogilko?

  And where does crypto, real estate, everything else fall into like? How do you decide about those things? And like even individual stocks, cause Nvidia?

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 5:49Marina Mogilko?

  That's like best investments ever.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think there's this, so we'll talk about how to build wealth. Because what I just kind of laid out for you in terms of the three fund portfolio is a very safe way to compound your wealth. But if you want to build wealth faster, typically you need to take a little more risk. And the more risk could involve individual stocks. It could involve you getting into real estate. It could go, it could be that you buy some crypto. But for the general person who doesn't really want to spend too much time investing, the portfolio I laid out earlier is perfect. Uh, you might want to add 5% in alternatives like crypto or real estate. You could do that.

• 6:26Marina Mogilko?

  But then, so like, cause I'm thinking about myself, like what, what number do you reach? When you start thinking about something alternative? Like, okay, let's say, I don't know, a hundred K invested in the stock market. Is that the time to think about other things?

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a tough question. I think you can always think about it, but higher numbers better for thinking about other things because the way capital works, you know, if you get 10% on 100K, that's a lot more significant than 10% on $100. So as your numbers and your portfolio balance grows, you can maybe set aside a portion of your portfolio to take higher concentrated risks so that you could try to make more money.

• 7:06Marina Mogilko?

  But you never start with it, right? You start with, ideally, you start with something that's-

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Ideally, you want to get your base up to at least $100,000 and then you kind of, from there, maybe you take small concentrated bets on things that you believe in. I think the danger of taking big swings when your portfolio isn't at $100,000 already is that you could, you could go to zero again. Or it could be really demoralizing. Let's say you, you get your portfolio up to 50,000 and you spend half of it and you put it into an individual stock that goes down 80%, then you're kind of right back where you started, maybe, maybe you lost a few years of progress and that can be really frustrating. So instead, what I like to see people do is get that momentum and keep that momentum going.

• 7:47Marina Mogilko?

  Just invest in that. How often do you check your balance? And how do you do regular investing? What would be your advice? Is it like manually or you can automate it?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  You can automate it. So you can do something in your brokerage account or even your Roth IRA or IRA or 401K where you contribute a certain amount every interval. So typically every two weeks is good. Every month is good too, but that's called dollar cost averaging. You just want to always buy into the market typically.

• 8:14Marina Mogilko?

  Is there a good day? I know for crypto, weekends are good, right?

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't think there's ever such thing as a good day. I think it doesn't really matter. As long as you're consistently investing, I think that that's more important.

• 8:24Marina Mogilko?

  Does it buy into like, so you, aren't you telling like every second Monday of the month, you buy this, this and that? And every brokerage can do that?

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Most brokerages have that feature. Yeah. It's just called recurring investment.

• 8:36Marina Mogilko?

  Can you recommend maybe two or three brokerage apps?

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, my favorite brokerages are probably Fidelity. That's like the biggest kind of well, most, one of the most well-capitalized brokerages in the United States. Um, another one I think that's very beginner friendly that got a lot of hate in 2021 was Robinhood, but they've made a lot of improvements since. You just have to kind of be careful there. It's a little more gamified.

• 8:59Marina Mogilko?

  Do they have automated?

• 9:01Speaker 02

  They do have automated. Yeah, you can automate it. And then some other ones like Schwab is fine. M1 Finance is good too.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  In general, the bigger the, the brokerage, usually the better.

• 9:11Marina Mogilko?

  So you mentioned those different accounts.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 9:13Marina Mogilko?

  You mentioned like brokerage.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 9:15Marina Mogilko?

  Like.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 9:15Marina Mogilko?

  General investment, 401K, Roth IRA. So if a person just starts investing. And they're aiming for like 10 years.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:25Marina Mogilko?

  Would you start a 401K or would you just put it in a brokerage account? Because 401K, you can only start taking out money when you're like 70 something, right?

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I believe it's, uh, I think 401K. Sorry, I get, I get a lot of the, the accounts confused sometimes, but I'm pretty sure 401K, you can start to take contributions out or sorry, your earnings out at 59 and a half. But then they start requiring you to take money out around the age of 70 and a half. I think that's required minimum distributions.

• 9:55Marina Mogilko?

  Because when we started 401K. And we started only two years ago. Because when I was talking to my husband, he's like, why would we just put money there? And like, we are 34, like 33, we're so active. Why don't we invest in business? Like, why would you invest in 401K? And I have my financial advisor was like, Marina, you don't understand. Compound interest without tax. That's a write-off for your business. So he's kind of making us contribute every year. But for me, psychology, again, I come from a country where we had so many turmoils, where our savings just disappeared. So what would be your general advice? Like, do you start with a general brokerage account? Or you go straight into tax savings strategies?

• 10:34Speaker 02

  That's a great question. I believe with your audience, which probably a lot of them are a non-US based, is my guess, you're gonna have a lot of skepticism when it comes to the 401K. That makes total sense. And sometimes it's better to take control of your own destiny and just like, take that money and go buy a house with it or buy a rental property with it. And you can tangibly see the money there. I get that too. The reason why the 401K in America is so good is that it's a forced savings mechanism. So it forces people to save that normally wouldn't save. If you're already a great saver, like let's say you save 50% of your income and you are a better active investor or you feel like you can do some business with it, maybe you do that instead.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Uh, if you need the money in 10 years, like what you just said, then you probably. Probably wouldn't invest it in a 401k because you gotta take that money out eventually. And if you put it in a 401k, you're not gonna be able to take that money out.

• 11:28Marina Mogilko?

  But you can borrow against your 401k.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can borrow against it. There's some strategies, yeah. But I would say in general, most people, if they need the money before they retire, brokerage is fine. Yeah, you're gonna be taxed on it, but that's better than, let's say, paying penalties because you're withdrawing from your Roth.

• 11:44Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, because the balance is a great, like, 10% or plus tax. I feel like a lot of people who are watching also just moved to the US and they're like, starting to realize how complex everything is.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Very complex. Now, the 401k is worth it if your employer gives you the match.

• 11:58Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Because that's just free money.

• 11:59Marina Mogilko?

  And also if you have your own business, because that's a runoff. And what I realized, what my CPA told me, once you get a 401k distribution, it goes onto your W2. So if you're applying for a mortgage,

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:09Marina Mogilko?

  that increases your W2 income, so it's good for mortgage.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Oh, that's good to know.

• 12:13Marina Mogilko?

  That was another key take.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's great. That's awesome.

• 12:16Marina Mogilko?

  Cool. Okay, so we talked about saving, et cetera. What about real estate? What about, like, do you rent? Do you rent or?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  I currently rent.

• 12:26Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, but in San Francisco, it's a lot cheaper to rent than to buy. So I live in San Francisco, the city.

• 12:31Marina Mogilko?

  Is there a general rule? So you said in San Francisco, it's cheaper to rent? Like, how do you calculate that?

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Well, I look at how much I pay in rent and I look at the comparable amount that I would pay in mortgage and what type of house that would afford me. And for the same amount of rent, I would not be able to afford anything nice. It's just like, I get maybe like a one-bedroom condo and I live currently in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom.

• 12:56Marina Mogilko?

  So you're not following the rule where you'll live under your means and?

• 13:00Speaker 02

  No, I'm definitely living under my means, for sure. Yeah.

• 13:03Marina Mogilko?

  But not too low.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  But not too low. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I still need space for like my studio and I realize I just kind of like a nicer place to live, so yeah.

• 13:12Marina Mogilko?

  But don't you have FOMO of like missing out on prices rising here?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  I do.

• 13:18Marina Mogilko?

  Because they double every 10 years, right? Here in the Bay?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, mostly not San Francisco condo market. That's kind of stayed flat.

• 13:26Marina Mogilko?

  That's like a crazy market. It stayed flat. The prices are so low and nobody wants to.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:32Marina Mogilko?

  Cause you can't really rent it out.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  If I can afford something down here and pay, you know, put a good down payment on it, I would probably do that. So down here would be the peninsula.

• 13:41Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Uh, cause real estate tends to appreciate quite well down here.

• 13:44Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah. And what I realized a lot of people who bought here, they pay twice as much in mortgage versus what we pay in rent. But they are, um, they have this upside when the property just, you know, gains a couple million.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially in the Bay area where that's very, very common. I would say across the country. There are some cities where real estate hasn't appreciated in the last 10 years. And so that's what you kind of have to consider. Like where do you live? How does the appreciation look historically? Yeah.

• 14:11Marina Mogilko?

  If it looks good historically, how?

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Might be a good idea. Yeah.

• 14:16Marina Mogilko?

  Is it an indicator that it's really gonna continue growing?

• 14:22Speaker 02

  I mean, in, in the finance world, you always say.

• 14:24Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, cause it's not a predictor.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Past performance is not a predictor of future results, but I mean.

• 14:29Marina Mogilko?

  Cause I'm always worried like Hawaii, right? It's grown so crazy in the past 10 years. I'm like, is it gonna continue or not?

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think those are, those are tougher questions and those kind of come down to more personal.

• 14:40Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Beliefs and decisions with their money. Yeah.

• 14:43Marina Mogilko?

  Have you ever considered buying real estate?

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, definitely.

• 14:46Marina Mogilko?

  Have you bought anything or what's, what's your plan here?

• 14:49Speaker 02

  No, I want to buy something probably the next year or two. So yeah, I'm still planning to, but mortgage rates right now are quite high. So waiting.

• 14:56Marina Mogilko?

  Are you gonna buy something to live in or you're gonna rent it out?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  I would buy something to live in personally. Yeah. I think I thought about renting things out, but I don't really wanna be someone's landlord. I think that's what I've realized.

• 15:08Marina Mogilko?

  Why not Airbnb? Like all the depreciation things?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  I think I feel like I could give, just make way more money.

• 15:15Marina Mogilko?

  With the stock market?

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Or yeah, or just focusing on my main business. Yeah.

• 15:19Marina Mogilko?

  Oh, interesting.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:21Marina Mogilko?

  But you can have someone manage it.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  I guess I could. Yeah.

• 15:24Marina Mogilko?

  Okay. Okay. Let's talk about.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  I know you have an Airbnb, so we can talk about it later.

• 15:28Marina Mogilko?

  I'm just trying to understand like other people's strategies. And I totally see how Airbnb didn't really do anything in terms of like income this year. It's just lost money and you know, it generated good revenue, but it still went to like covering the mortgage, et cetera.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Did you spend a lot of time on it?

• 15:43Marina Mogilko?

  No.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:44Marina Mogilko?

  Well, I spent some time. I went there filming and like we bought the furniture.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:48Marina Mogilko?

  And we're like, we had to change the air conditioner and we had to do the listing, the photo, like everything.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:53Marina Mogilko?

  But that was a cool experience for me.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Okay. As long as you enjoyed it. Yeah, for sure.

• 15:57Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, yeah. But not as much as compared to like my, my business.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:02Marina Mogilko?

  Let's talk about crypto.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Let's do it. I like crypto.

• 16:04Marina Mogilko?

  I am so like this year, I'm like, should I find me a course?

• 16:09Speaker 00

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• 17:09Speaker 02

  Maybe you should.

• 17:10Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah. What do you think? Like what, what would be the, what would be advice here?

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Okay. My crypto advice from what I'm going to tell you right now is going to be very different from my YouTube channel. On my YouTube channel, my audience hates crypto. I've already tried to talk about Bitcoin. I've tried to talk about Ethereum. People are very anti Bitcoin Ethereum on the channel. And so I just tend to shy away from it on the channel. I think my personal opinion is that crypto is one of the best ways to kind of.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Level out wealth in a way, it's almost like like a meritocracy. So if you're able to identify really great coins and get in them early, that's like, people actually do make a lot of money with that. However, for every one person that makes, let's say, a 20x or a 50x on a crypto coin, you have 99 people losing all their money. And I think that is incredibly difficult. That's incredibly difficult part about crypto. And with crypto, your greed gets unimaginable, unimaginably high. You get so greedy because you're like, oh, I have a 5x, I want a 10x. And then that's hard to manage emotionally.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  And if you're in a, if you're buying a lot of crypto, you have to watch it all day because it's 24/7, it never stops. So there are a lot of mental issues, not mental issues, I want to say, but it takes a toll on your mind if you're investing crypto. However, I have seen people turn a small amount of money into a large amount of money just by buying the right crypto coin. But even knowing the right.

• 18:43Marina Mogilko?

  And retiring at 20 something.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 18:47Marina Mogilko?

  So how do you, have you tried picking meme coins to invest in?

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Yes, I have.

• 18:52Marina Mogilko?

  How was it?

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Some are great, some are bad.

• 18:54Marina Mogilko?

  How?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Net, I'm up.

• 18:56Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  And I do.

• 18:58Marina Mogilko?

  This year, you're doing it now?

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:59Marina Mogilko?

  So how do you find them? Through friends chats?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Typically through friends chats, yeah. I would say you have to be kind of plugged into a crypto community of some sort. You can do that by buying like, let's say, let's say you have the most expensive NFT, right? Like back in 2021, it was like a board eight, right? They might have like a little insider group on Discord where you can kind of trade, trade ideas with each other.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  The longer you're in the crypto space, the more you get to know the people on in crypto. Sometimes there's crypto Twitter, so you get to know some of the influencers. Maybe if you know some of the influencers, that's great. If you work in crypto, right?

• 19:36Marina Mogilko?

  So it's mostly insider information?

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there is some inside information, but there's also just like keeping a pulse of what's going on in the crypto markets. And you can even make money not being an insider, but you have to keep a pulse on what's going on all the time. And you have to be able to move fast and you have to be very objective and not get too emotionally like tied into it. That's what's, that's what's very hard. Because even if you're right, if you're emotionally too invested and let's say you stay in the coin for too long, you could lose all your gains, so.

• 20:06Marina Mogilko?

  So you track every single day what's going on and if you see it going down, you just sell?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Something like that. I mean, I only, I'm only in like four coins right now. But I used to be in like, if you're in ten to twenty, it's hard to track everything. But if you're just in four, then you just check every, you know, you just check the four.

• 20:22Marina Mogilko?

  What is the platform that you're using? Or is it a different platform for every?

• 20:26Speaker 02

  I have Coinbase, and then I have a Solana wallet on Phantom, and then I have a MetaMask wallet for my Ethereum transactions.

• 20:33Marina Mogilko?

  Okay.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  So those are decentralized exchanges.

• 20:34Marina Mogilko?

  But all of your coins, yeah, I have MetaMask, I have Coinbase. But I remember when I was trying to play with meme coins in two thousand twenty-one, I had to get in so many exchanges, because

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:44Marina Mogilko?

  they're all so different, different platforms, you know, they only launched on this exchange, and you're like, oh, I need to transfer money there and convert it into some weird coin to buy another weird coin.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  These days, it's a lot easier. Mostly, it's just on like, either, you're either on the Solana chain, or you're on, let's say Ethereum or Base, which is Coinbase.

• 21:03Marina Mogilko?

  So Phantom for Solana, Coinbase?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not financial advice, but you know, if you're trying to get into it, that's what you would do, but it's very hard. I would say if you're completely new to crypto, you probably won't make money. You kind of have to have a good network of people that you already know, you kind of have to get into it a little bit, or maybe you buy into a community, something like that.

• 21:23Marina Mogilko?

  Okay, let's, let's do a simple strategy then. Let's do Bitcoin. Uh, what would be your recommended percentage of the portfolio that goes into Bitcoin?

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Of crypto?

• 21:32Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, uh, no, uh, in general.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Oh, um, if you believe in crypto for the long term, which Bitcoin is the best asset of all those, I'd probably put three to five percent of your portfolio in Bitcoin.

• 21:43Marina Mogilko?

  Remember how it was one to two percent?

• 21:45Speaker 02

  It was?

• 21:46Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, like three or four years ago, I'd ask everyone, or it would be like one to two percent. Now, I think BlackRock created from like two percent to four percent in their portfolio, and like suddenly, my financial advisor is like, yeah, five percent. I'm like, wow, interesting.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, five percent. I mean, five percent is not gonna kill you.

• 22:00Marina Mogilko?

  Then it goes to ten, then it goes to, in fact, it's, it's taking over. It just, it's like, it's wild seeing this trend, and like people believing in crypto and then suddenly not believing, it's just such a...

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Well, I think this year was pretty monumental for Bitcoin in particular because of the ETF, and also a lot of these institutions adopting it, so I don't think Bitcoin's gonna go anywhere. Let's say in twenty years, um, there was kind of the threat of the quantum computer chip. Did you see that?

• 22:26Marina Mogilko?

  No.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  The, the Google, Google released like a quantum chip like a couple of weeks ago, and, or maybe last week. And that kind of threatened Bitcoin because the whole idea was like...

• 22:37Marina Mogilko?

  Oh, cuz it's take a lot of energy to.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  No, the idea is like the chip could just break Bitcoin's encryption really fast.

• 22:44Marina Mogilko?

  Oh.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  But.

• 22:45Marina Mogilko?

  It didn't?

• 22:46Speaker 02

  No, it's not gonna happen, not yet, at least. I think that was like a uh, a fleeting rumor or fleeting news. So that Bitcoin's price reacted a little bit, but then it just went back up.

• 22:59Marina Mogilko?

  Okay, so the the strategy would be, okay, if it's five percent and you don't wanna get on those exchanges, you can just basically buy an ETF through whatever, like Fidelity, right?

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can get exposure through an ETF like Fidelity, yeah. Like Fidelity has their own ETF for Bitcoin and they back it up with Bitcoin, so they buy Bitcoin to back their ETF, yeah.

• 23:21Marina Mogilko?

  That's great. And if you have, say, ten thousand dollars that you would put into crypto next year.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 23:27Marina Mogilko?

  How would you do it by utilizing dollar cost averaging? Is it like ten thousand dollars throughout a year?

• 23:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd probably do, I'd probably do like ten thousand dollars across the year.

• 23:37Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Cuz a year is a pretty good time. It's a longer time in crypto.

• 23:43Marina Mogilko?

  For crypto, it looks like it's such a long time.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  It is a long time.

• 23:45Marina Mogilko?

  I would say like for stock market, that sounds okay, but for crypto, you might like miss on all the.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  You might miss, but crypto could also go down seventy percent, you know, in the summer or something. And you might be able to get it cheaper. So, yeah, I'd say a year is pretty good.

• 23:59Marina Mogilko?

  So for, will it apply to any amount of money that you have in mind for investing? Would a year be great for dollar cost averaging? Like if somebody saved up, they've been saving and they're like, okay, two thousand twenty five, I'm gonna do it, so a year.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a crypto, yeah, a year is pretty good.

• 24:13Marina Mogilko?

  Every two weeks throughout a year.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, why don't you do, why don't you split up your ten thousand dollars divided by twenty four equal payments and do it every two weeks, or twenty six equal payments, or two weeks.

• 24:24Marina Mogilko?

  And just ETF that tracks Bitcoin, because a lot of people talk about like Ethereum, that it has so much.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  That's, yeah, it depends on how deep you wanna get into crypto. I mean, if you're just doing Bitcoin, then ETF is fine.

• 24:34Marina Mogilko?

  There are no ETFs for Ethereum, just Bitcoin.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Uh, they're pending. I think they're, they're not fully out yet, but.

• 24:41Marina Mogilko?

  Okay, so Bitcoin, it would be the easiest.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you want to buy Ethereum, you have to go on Coinbase or some sort of exchange that's available in your country.

• 24:48Marina Mogilko?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  And then buy, you know, buy it through there.

• 24:51Marina Mogilko?

  Okay.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:52Marina Mogilko?

  All right, well, we talked about investing. These are like good decisions. What are the worst decisions people can make and do things with their money in two thousand twenty five?

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I really think it's like, think about the things that kill your wealth early on, like before you get to a hundred thousand dollars in net worth, or let's say a big milestone, like fifty thousand, if you kill your wealth. Shopping, doing dumb things, buying a new car you don't really need. Like, your, your case might be different. You might need a new car and you have the funds that you could afford a new car.

• 25:22Marina Mogilko?

  You know, we spent like two hours yesterday with my husband debating if ten thousand dollars is worth saving, buying the new Model Y or the old Model Y. And I'm like, with the new, you get the service, you get the warranty and all of that. And I'm like, is it worth the headache? But I could invest ten K in Bitcoin. It's just so hard to make those decisions.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Those decisions are harder the less money you have, right? Like, actually, they're easier the less money you have, which is like, if you don't have that much money, don't spend ten K on, on the new Model Y when you buy the old Model Y.

• 25:53Marina Mogilko?

  How do you make those decisions? Do you come, come up with an Excel spreadsheet or, and like calculate the NPV?

• 26:00Speaker 02

  No, that's definitely harder to make that decision, like, off the bat with, with like, you kind of have to know your own personal situation. But your monthly payments or your monthly payment for transportation should not be more than ten to fifteen percent of your gross income. So all of a sudden, let's say you make fifty K a year. If your car payment is like eight hundred dollars a month, like, that's clearly a poor financial decision.

• 26:22Marina Mogilko?

  And then there's the registration fee, which is...

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Exactly. So I think a lot of people spend too much money on cars. That's typically a wealth killer, especially early on in your wealth building journey. And in America, it's very common, right? That thing, everyone wants a fancy car. And then credit card debt, anything that's slowing down your wealth building. I think that before you get to a milestone number, you should just be as frugal as possible and just get there quicker. Because the quicker you get to that bigger number, the better that money will compound for you, let's say, invested.

• 26:50Marina Mogilko?

  Do you ever sell? Because if you see the market is all time high, you're kind of tempted to sell and you're like, oh, let's sell, wait for another dip. Or use this um upside to just finance my lifestyle this year and maybe not work.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, okay, so my ideal holding period is typically forever. That's the best holding period, but sometimes like right now, all my cash is fully deployed into the market.

• 27:14Marina Mogilko?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  So I have like.

• 27:15Marina Mogilko?

  All of your, what about your?

• 27:17Speaker 02

  I have my emergency fund and like my business bank accounts.

• 27:18Marina Mogilko?

  Is it for business or just your personal?

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Both. I have both cash reserves for business and personal, but all my investing funds are deployed. Typically, I would like to see ten to fifteen percent of my cash in my portfolio. Like that means of all my funds in my portfolio, I'd like to have ten or fifteen percent in cash.

• 27:35Marina Mogilko?

  Do you feel bad about that cash just in the account when the market is growing so fast?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  No, because, because what happens if there's a correction or something, something unexpected happens? Then I'll have some cash to buy that dip up.

• 27:47Marina Mogilko?

  But that's in the high yield savings account or it's just a checking?

• 27:49Speaker 02

  That's just in my brokerage account. It's probably, I think it earns four point five percent in the money market.

• 27:54Marina Mogilko?

  I was still, okay.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  But I want to have extra cash in my portfolio in case there's a dip or a big correction, or I can get some stocks for cheap if something bad happens. Um, right now I don't have that cash. It's all fully in the market, so I'd like to sell a little bit of my positions just to, just to replenish that cash pile going into twenty twenty five, because right now everything's all time highs. It's really, it's, it's kind of frothy, they call it, which means that it's frothing to the top, which is not quite a bubble, but it's like multiples are high right now.

• 28:27Marina Mogilko?

  So are you gonna sell this year or next year?

• 28:29Speaker 02

  I would probably, if I sold, it would probably be before December thirty first.

• 28:32Marina Mogilko?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:34Marina Mogilko?

  Um, when you said you have this money in your brokerage account and it earns four point five percent, is it a standard thing that brokerage, brokerage accounts do?

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Typically, yeah, typically, if you're in the right brokerage, your money gets called swept into like a money market fund, which just means it's, it just sits in money market funds and those money market funds typically pay around four to four point five percent.

• 28:57Marina Mogilko?

  So if I transfer, is that fidelity?

• 28:59Speaker 02

  That's, that's in fidelity, but I think Schwab probably does it too.

• 29:01Marina Mogilko?

  So you just transfer your cash there and they automatically start doing that or?

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not a high yield though, it's not a high yield account, it's a money market fund, which means that.

• 29:10Marina Mogilko?

  You can take it out anytime.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  You can take it out anytime.

• 29:13Marina Mogilko?

  And with high yield.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  But the rate is not guaranteed either, it fluctuates a lot too, yeah.

• 29:17Marina Mogilko?

  But with those high yield savings accounts, sometimes they give you a period, a time period, like six months, and you can't take your money out before that. Or if you take, there is a penalty.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  That would be a certificate of deposit, yeah.

• 29:28Marina Mogilko?

  CD.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  A CD, yeah.

• 29:30Marina Mogilko?

  Wow, that's interesting. Ten to five percent cash.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Ten to fifteen percent in cash in your portfolio would be nice. That's me. I'm a little more less risk on. And I'd like to have some cash or opportunities.

• 29:43Marina Mogilko?

  So when you sell your stocks, it's only to replenish the cash?

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Ideally, I just keep all that money in the investing portfolio forever. I haven't withdrawn from my investing portfolio in like ten years.

• 29:56Marina Mogilko?

  Wow. How often do you make investments that are not part of your plan? So you have automated investments?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:05Marina Mogilko?

  But like, is there like a Monday every two months?

• 30:08Speaker 02

  No.

• 30:09Marina Mogilko?

  When you sit or like?

• 30:09Speaker 02

  I'd say this year, maybe I've made four investments that weren't part of the original plan.

• 30:14Marina Mogilko?

  Can you share?

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I bought some Coinbase, bought some Nvidia, and I bought some Robinhood.

• 30:20Marina Mogilko?

  I feel like everyone bought Nvidia.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Coinbase, Nvidia, Robinhood, I bought all those. Like, I bought Robinhood in February and March, and then a lot in June and August. Coinbase, I bought some, I think, in February, and then Nvidia, I bought before an earnings report. I remember Nvidia was trading for like six sixty-five, and I was like, oh, I want to buy the earnings just for fun. And it like went up a lot, yeah. But, you know, six sixty-five pre-split, so now it's sixty-six.

• 30:46Marina Mogilko?

  So it's basically triggered by news and?

• 30:49Speaker 02

  It's usually triggered by news, or I read like a quarterly report that I think is very bullish for the company. And then I try to do some financial analysis on like, what multiple is that company trading for? And do I think that's undervalued? So that was the case with Robinhood, like their user growth was off the charts. Everyone, they started innovating on all these products, right? They had like seven products coming out, including a credit card, which I thought would be really great for their business. Their average deposits were going up. They still had a long way to go before they reached total addressable market for assets under custody. Like Schwab has like nine trillion dollars under custody, and Robinhood had like two hundred billion, so like. Like there's a lot, there's like a way, a long way to go, which I thought was good.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  And I also thought the price of the stock was beaten down because of the negative sentiment that it had from GameStop. Like people just forgot about it. This was back in February. And I thought the multiples, I think, on it were pretty low. Like it was valued. I don't remember the exact multiple, but it was valued lower compared to comparable tech companies.

• 31:51Marina Mogilko?

  Oh, that's a lot of analyzing.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:53Marina Mogilko?

  Do you do that every day?

• 31:54Speaker 02

  No, that was only for that particular company. I was very interested in it. I was reading a lot about their financials and reading a lot of their quarterly reports to make sure that I want to invest in that company.

• 32:03Marina Mogilko?

  And you do the same for your meme coin strategy, right?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 32:07Marina Mogilko?

  No?

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Meme coins are kinda.

• 32:09Marina Mogilko?

  You see, you buy and that's it?

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Meme coins are like, the less you think about it is typically the better it does.

• 32:15Marina Mogilko?

  Okay.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you can do some research on it, but it's not gonna have the same, like, you can't evaluate a meme coin like a stock. Like a stock has fundamentals that it has backing it versus a meme is like, how good's the meme?

• 32:26Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  It's not the same.

• 32:28Marina Mogilko?

  When, uh, talking about like the individual stock investments, what is the percentage of your portfolio?

• 32:34Speaker 02

  For me, it's fifty fifty now. So it's fifty percent is individual stocks, fifty percent is ETFs. But that's only because all my individual stocks grew so much this year, like Nvidia is up like a crazy amount. Ideally, I'd like to have like sixty to seven percent ETFs and then the rest in individuals.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  But right now it's definitely higher individual than.

• 32:54Marina Mogilko?

  So basically the strategy would just like, ideally, if you wanna follow your plan, you would sell some of the individual stocks to put it back and rebalancing?

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Or whenever I add money into my portfolio next.

• 33:05Marina Mogilko?

  You're gonna buy ETFs.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  To bring the weight back up, yeah.

• 33:09Marina Mogilko?

  Wow, so it looks like a lot of work for.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  It's a lot of work for, I would say, the, like, if you're working at like a corporate job, you just don't wanna worry about it, just do ETFs.

• 33:16Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, you just do the, the split that we talked about at the beginning. When does it make sense to hire someone to do that? Or does it?

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no, it does. It definitely makes sense to hire someone to do it if you don't want to pay attention to it and you need more financial guidance than than most people like that. You don't want to do it yourself. And you don't feel like you even want to focus your time on it because I'm in it every day. So it's a little different for me. Like I like it. But if you don't like it, number one, and you probably have like a portfolio of. I'd say around a hundred K starts to make sense. Anything below that, they might charge you too much.

• 33:52Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, and they charge like one percent or?

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Typical financial advisors will charge you one percent of your of your portfolio size a year. Um, if you're lower than that, they might have just like a minimum fee, but even one percent is a lot. Because one percent will come eat into your compound growth over time. However, they can also offer you a lot more. Um. Advice. Than just investing. They can help you with estate planning, retirement planning. Uh, your kids' education, college planning, stuff like that. They can do a lot more.

• 34:23Marina Mogilko?

  What's your general recommendation? Because I feel there are so many videos on YouTube where people like never ever. Hire someone because it compounds. You can do the same strategy just by yourself.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  My opinion is if.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  You need more than investing advice, you go to a financial advisor. But if you just want investing, you know.

• 34:44Marina Mogilko?

  Just do yourself. Just do those splits.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Just do a split or do an ETF. Yeah.

• 34:47Marina Mogilko?

  Okay, I think my question that's gonna wrap this up will be, how do you stay sane when the market goes down?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  I would say I always like to think of what the stock market might look like in thirty years from now. And so you know, in thirty years from now, it's probably going to be a lot, a lot higher than it is right now.

• 35:05Marina Mogilko?

  Is that what you say to yourself?

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:07Marina Mogilko?

  When things go down?

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And you know, drawdowns of twenty to forty percent happen. It's like your portfolio could be, let's say your portfolio is at a hundred thousand dollars. It could go down to sixty thousand dollars in a year.

• 35:18Marina Mogilko?

  And if we remember Great Depression, it could go to almost zero. But how do you? How, basically, it's like a conversation that you have with yourself.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, you do.

• 35:27Marina Mogilko?

  Because when COVID happened, everyone was like, that's pretty much like the Great Depression. Okay, we're gonna lose everything, like 2008. And it keeps happening more often than it used to.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  It's tough because I think this goes back to not needing the money, right? If you don't need the money and you can just leave it in the market and not touch it for a long time, then you're gonna be able to weather the.

• 35:49Marina Mogilko?

  Then don't touch it.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're gonna be weather those storms a lot easier. But like, let's say you needed the money next year and all of a sudden it's down forty percent. You might be like, alright, I just gotta sell because I don't want it to go down more. So that makes you more emotional. I think the longer time horizon you have, the less emotional you naturally are because you don't have to worry too much about it. Because you know in like thirty years, it'll be like during the 2008 financial crisis or let's say the COVID crash. If you told yourself in thirty years it will be a lot higher, you'd just leave your money in. And you didn't have to wait thirty years, you just had to wait a year and then it was a lot harder than it was, so.

• 36:24Marina Mogilko?

  Same with crypto, right? When Bitcoin went down so much, people like selling off, panicking. And also, social media doesn't help to everyone.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's the problem is that investing takes a long time and we live in an age where everything is instant. And you're overloaded with news and information and CNBC and people saying you should sell everything and.

• 36:50Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, panicking.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, really, you should just invest and just like forget about it for like fifteen years and come back and go, oh, great.

• 36:58Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, that's the best.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what you should do, but most people can't do it. And so it's more fun to track the market because it's like something to do, you know? Something to talk about. It's like tracking your sports team.

• 37:08Marina Mogilko?

  Exactly, yeah. Thank you so much.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you for having me.

• 37:11Marina Mogilko?

  I think it was so useful. This is gonna be my first like video of 2025.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  No way, this is it?

• 37:16Marina Mogilko?

  I think so, yeah.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Alright, sounds good.

• 37:17Marina Mogilko?

  So people can start the year with the right mindset. You know, this year is the year for me to build my wealth, start building it. And from a first, coming from a person who's an immigrant and starting building her wealth in 2020, this year has been just incredible, like seeing that my investments can generate.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  That much income?

• 37:36Marina Mogilko?

  Income that's compared to my active income? I'm like thirty-four. Can I retire at thirty-five, please?

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 37:43Marina Mogilko?

  So, yeah, thank you so much, Humphries.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 37:45Marina Mogilko?

  Super useful. Please subscribe to Humphries' channel.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Subscribe.

• 37:48Marina Mogilko?

  He gives advice weekly or several times a week?

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Every week, there's a new video.

• 37:51Marina Mogilko?

  Every week, yeah.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  So, put a link in the... Put a link below.

• 37:54Marina Mogilko?

  Yes, thank you so much.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  All right, bye, guys.

• 37:57Speaker 04

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