John Q Developer's Blog

2025 Investor Policy Statement

2025 Family Financial & Investor Policy Statement

These should not be updated more than once a year in DECEMBER during the annual rebalance if needed.

  1. I provide my girlfriend who lives with me with a list of institutions to contact with my information upon my death so has a paid off house, a solid emergency fund, remains on track for retirement with reasonable contributions on her part, and can handle the aftermath expenses (i.e. lawyers, funeral, grief counseling). This is all of my cash, the house, and a 1/3rd of my investments which is roughly half of everything I have in 2025.
  2. I donate the remainder of my savings to pet charities and family members with health issues. This is just liquidating retirement accounts or letting people hold onto them as they like.
  3. I maintain 3 bank accounts for redundancy due to past experiences with untrustworthy banks requiring me to apply legal pressure to get issues resolved.
  4. I maintain 3 brokerage accounts for redundancy and the issue with untrustworthy banks as above.
  5. I seek to have $1.25 million in 2025 USD + a paid off house by 2040 and a consistent $50,000 in 2025 USD budget maximum (excluding major vacations/major medical events).
  6. I mostly invest in broad market ETFs (50+ Holdings) for equity.
  7. I maintain a 80% equity-centered growth / 20% bond-centered allocation until 2030 (Age 45).
  8. It should be noted that "equity centered" means things that are heavily correlated with equity results and can include things like REITs or JEPI that are not "traditional" stock buying.
  9. It should be noted that bond-centered may include CDs, individual low risk government bonds, and so forth that are not strictly bond ETFs for a variety of reasons such as being in accounts I use as a secondary emergency fund (i.e. Longer than 9 months and/or 5 figure unexpected expenses in combination with another emergency) for things I do not expect to happen but statistically are not that unlikely.
  10. Alternative traditional broad market ETFs investments such as REITs, JEPIs/options funds, and so forth should not be more than 10% of my equity correlated holdings (8% of total) after each rebalance.
  11. Alternatives to bond-centered allocations (CDs, individual government treasuries/bonds) should not exceed my total cash emergency fund. This is roughly $40,000 USD in emergency funds + $40,000 USD in this secondary emergency fund that I can draw from in easily accessed retirement accounts (HAS, Roth deposits) without penalty.
  12. Cash / bonds over $45,000 in my 2 stage emergency funds (18-24 months normal expenses) should be invested into the portfolio and should be shifted into appropriate investments on a quarterly basis. It should be noted that my bonds/etc in this category is considered part of my bond allocation.
  13. Portfolio rebalancing should be done annually, concentrating high growth investments into tax free (Roth/HSA) accounts as much as practical to minimize taxes on investment growth.
  14. Bonds outside of the 2nd stage of my emergency fund should be kept in traditional 401k/401k rollover accounts that are before tax money as the growth (and future tax burden in the US) would be lower.
  15. Maintain retirement location visibility / data collection
    1. Yuma, AZ / Mexicali + Los Algodones, Mexico medical
    2. Philippines
    3. Albania
    4. Costa Rica
    5. Panama
    6. It should be noted that tracking is relative to my personal budget and not guaranteed to be valid for everyone.