This week, I’m talking about how I invest my money as a financial advisor. 

Today, I’m talking about how I allocate my assets as a financial advisor - in other words, how my assets are split up among stocks, bonds, real estate, property, cash, etc. 

My largest asset is my business interest in True North Retirement Advisors, which is the business that I run and co-own with my father. We currently manage about $285 million in assets and it’s a 7-figure business. The upside is that our business is growing and I expect that this asset will continue to grow, the downside is that it’s a completely illiquid asset, which is a tricky challenge that all business owners face. It’s not uncommon for half of one’s net worth as a business owner to be tied up in their business, and I’m no exception. 

My next largest asset category is stocks - these are spread out among joint accounts, Roth IRA and 401ks, and Traditional IRA accounts. I’m including mutual funds and ETFs here too when I talk about stocks, because I own some of those, but in virtually all of my investments, I 

I also have a preference toward owning individual stocks. I like dividend paying stocks, and small and mid-cap growth companies. Most of my investment accounts are invested in individual stocks. But I actually don’t do my own stock picking. I’ve outsourced that to a couple of asset managers, and for a very low fee, I have customized stock portfolios that I’ve been very happy with. 

I own virtually no bonds - less than 1% of my portfolio is invested in bonds - which makes sense given that I am 35 years old and my husband is 36. I love owning stocks and when it comes to investing, I don’t get too worked up about losing money in a down market, so I suspect that I will always have a strong personal preference toward stocks. Seeing daily fluctuations across my client’s accounts of millions of dollars has really desensitized me to volatility in the stock market. 

Even though I don’t own bonds, I do keep a large amount of cash on hand - about 10% of our liquid investments are in cash. I like having cash for emergencies and larger purchases. 

Next after our stock portfolio is our property - our largest asset here is our house, but I’m also including cars here. The real asset value is lower here after the debt, because we have a mortgage on our house and a couple of car loans. We still owe about half of our home’s value through our mortgage, and aside from our mortgage our only debts are car loans. 

Finally, we have college savings accounts for all 3 of our kids and a donor advised fund - all of which we contribute to monthly. I’ll talk more about the college savings accounts later this week and the unique strategy we’re using to stretch our dollars in those accounts. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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