Many people read personal finance blogs for tips on how to make money. To assist the reading public, we thought we’d briefly discuss the top three sources of our net worth so the reader can see areas we’ve been successful in.
1) Investment Real Estate: Miel and I have had two investment properties. We sold one because of the wear and tear on our relationship. However, we still have the other one, and its equity is about 18 percent of our networth. The DC housing boom was good to us.
2) Hansens Natural Corp: While the wisdom of placing a large position in a single stock is debatable. We made approximately $50,000 by investing in Hansens. We’ve still got a limited holding, but the market has been hard on the company recently, so we’ve invested elsewhere.
3) TIAA & CREF: Miel and I have both made healthy contributions to our retirement accounts through TIAA & CREF. Roughly 28 percent of our networth comes from this. Generally speaking, retirement 401ks are great because they a) reduce your taxable income b) come with employer matching funds and c) give your funds a chance to earn market returns.
While I’m a big fan of TIAA & CREF, I think the reader should be aware that they have recently changed their business focus to emphasis retail mutual fund sales. Accordingly their fees have gone from .5 to 1 percent in many of their funds. This not a good move from an investors standpoint.
Getting back to the point, nearly half of our net worth comes from three sources.
As always feel free to leave a comment or drop us an email if you’d like to chat!
Good luck and happy investing!
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