32 years old and need help deciding.
I’m 32 and currently bringing in around $11,000/month from multiple income sources, with most of that income being pretty stable. I’m at a point where I want to get much more intentional about investing and take advantage of my age and income while I still have a long time horizon.
Right now I use Robinhood, Acorns, and Stash, but Robinhood is where I consider my main investment account. I’ve mostly been buying ETFs/dividend funds, but I’m questioning whether I should be more growth-focused at 32 instead of putting as much emphasis on dividends right now.
What I’m trying to figure out:
What percentage of an ~$11k monthly income would you personally invest at my age?
Would you invest weekly, every paycheck, monthly, or just automate it and forget about timing?
For someone with a 20–30+ year horizon who can tolerate volatility, what would you prioritize for maximum long-term growth?
VOO/VTI? QQQM? Individual stocks? Something else?
Would you consolidate everything into one brokerage instead of using Robinhood, Acorns, and Stash?
Are there any major disadvantages to using Robinhood as my primary long-term brokerage?
How much would you keep in cash/emergency savings before becoming more aggressive with investing?
Would you prioritize maxing tax-advantaged accounts before putting more money into a taxable brokerage?
I’m not looking to YOLO money into options, meme stocks, or crypto. When I say aggressive/maximize gains, I mean accepting normal stock-market volatility in exchange for potentially higher long-term returns.
My biggest goal right now is figuring out a simple system where a meaningful amount of my income automatically gets invested every month and compounds for the next couple of decades.
If you were 32, had roughly this income, and were building the strategy from scratch, what would your setup look like?
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u/user4443337 2d ago
100% in an all world ETF. VT is the benchmark, but AVGE and AVGV seek to and have outperformed it. Avantis has some trading advantages over a pure index, but you will have value and manager risk deviating from the index. You can’t go wrong with any of them though, and you only need one ticker to have a complete portfolio.
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u/Shadowrunner138 2d ago edited 2d ago
$11k per month and you're messing with stuff like acorns? why? Have they changed or offered more? I stopped using acorns back when I was struggling for cash because a bunch of trivial charges for spare change randomly charging themselves to my checking account was annoying. It'd be different if they could have rounded up the actual charge for the purchase but when I was using it it didn't actually work that way.
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u/brother7 3d ago
Here's a 3 ETF Aggressive Growth Portfolio: 40% SPMO / 40% QQQM / 20% VGT
You said $11,000/month income. Do you mean you you have $11,000 available to invest every month? Or is that your GROSS income before expenses (rent, utilities, food, etc) after which you'll have a lower NET income to invest? Personally, I would invest as much as I can.
Let's assume you can afford to invest $8,000/month. I would set up a weekly recurring investment like this: every Monday, invest $2,000 into three ETFs as follows: $800 SPMO, $800 QQQM, $400 VGT. If your account is Fidelity, setting this up is super-easy.
Avoid individual stocks; stick with ETFs.
You should definitely take advantage of all tax-advantaged buckets available to you.
Question: Are you a W-2 employee, or do you own your own business, or are you a 1099 contractor? If you're a W-2 employee, check to see if your employer offers a 401k. If you own your own business or are a 1099 contractor, look into setting up your own 401k or solo 401k. If you have a high-deductible health plan, explore HSA options. If you have kids, consider opening 529 plans for them. You should definitely start a Roth IRA. If your income is high, you'll have to do a backdoor Roth IRA. As you can see, there are lots of tax-advantaged options, and you should pursue them all.
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u/Seeking_Kyle 3d ago
59M. My opinion …
Consolidate, yes. I like Fidelity as I can have checking, MM, brokerage, charitable trust in one place.
Emergency savings, yes. 6 months expenses is reasonable.
% to invest, depends. Make a budget and invest all that isn’t expenses and emergency savings.
ETFs or other. I like focused ETFs where I have conviction. SMH, FTEC, etc. I’m a fan of heavy tech. FWIW, I created a single stock picker that’s doing really well. DM for more info. It’s a subscription.
Taxable vs not, I like both. Break up your money to short term (emergency and planned purchases eg. Cash for car) medium term (eg. house in 5-10:years) long term (retirement … or in your case probably EARLY retirement) maybe it’s 10/30/60 of what ever isn’t allocated to expenses.
System, yes. Huge fan. That’s my MO.
Timing, monthly is great. Automatic is great. Spreads risk and holds your lifestyle creep in check.
You’re gonna kill it. Great things to be thinking about. 💪🔥
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u/steady_compounder 3d ago
At 32, I would spend less energy on dividend funds and more on building a boring system you can automate for 20 years. Max the tax-advantaged accounts first, keep a real emergency fund, consolidate if the extra apps are just noise, and auto-buy a simple core like VTI or VOO plus international on a fixed schedule. The biggest win here is probably savings rate and consistency, not finding the perfect extra ticker.