How I Manage My Money Each Month

What I'd like to pivot now and go even deeper now that we've gotten to know Alex. His background, his mindset, strategy, beliefs, the skills you've developed over the year, and how you've been able to really produce a lot of success leveraging YouTube and all it has to offer. What I'd like to dive into now is your investing framework as it relates to creating wealth in AI. So a twofold question. There's the part about how much to invest, Alex, and where and what companies. Right. And you cover that a ton on your YouTube channel. So I urge people to go watch Alex's channel so that he doesn't have to spend too much time here on it. What I'm most interested in is the where are you storing the dollars and then how is that being allocated? So earlier you mentioned Roth ira. I'm a big fan of Roth ira. Are there other kinds of financial vehicles, accounts, setups that you're using as our starting point? So I'd like to get that understood, and then you can talk to us about maybe the allocation of the. Either the ideal portfolio, or you can just say, look, this is what I do. Not investment advice. Yeah, this is what I do.

Yeah. So first of all, like, I want to make it clear I am absolutely unqualified to give financial or investment advice of any kind. Not a financial advisor, never claimed to be, and I cannot and will not give financial advice. Right? So everything I'm about to say is absolutely my and only my opinion. And it's just an opinion of, you know, a guy who's in his late 30s, has no children, and has, like, a stomach for risk. Maybe not an appetite for it anymore, but, like, can handle risk for long stretches of time. Right? So massive grain of salt on everything I'm about to say. Right? Okay. So I have a Roth IRA. I always max allocate that I have a traditional IRA. These are leftovers from my time in my W2.

Okay.

So I always allocate to those first just because they grow tax free, Right? So it's like, that's where I want to store as much of my wealth as I can. And then everything after that just goes into a standard Fidelity brokerage account. There's no, like, magic other than I have a holding company, the nuances of which we probably don't care about. But it's just because I'm both an investor and a financial YouTuber. So there's some, like, deep confliction that has to get done between how I buy stocks, when I buy stocks. Which stocks I buy versus like when I talk about them online.

Oh, really?

Yeah, there's something, there's some like stuff that you really want to like make sure you're doing or not doing when you're like, if you make a video that moves the market and you're buying stocks and then making videos right after it. Exactly. Yeah.

Dude. How do these other creators do it? Like the Graham Stephans and Andre Jickson where they're like, boom, buy this or I'm buying this right now.

Yeah, like it's a, it's an interesting question that I don't know the legal answers. Okay, So I stay away from it all. So like here's, here's how I protect. I can tell you how I protect myself from any of that.

Please.

Right.

Please do.

I talk about very big companies where it's very clear that little old me is not moving Nvidia stock, right? Like that's a $4 trillion company. If I move at one penny, it's like I have a superpower. Right. That's incredible. So that's one thing is I cover very non volatile like investments for the most part. Two is I maintain a trust that has like a fixed allocation schedule, you know, so money goes in at the start of every month, it gets allocated equally like whatever.

On your stuff, your auto.

Yeah, on my stuff depositing, which has nothing to do with like my content schedule and whatever. So it's like, you know, I hold shares of Palantir, but when I talk about Palantir versus when I buy Palantir completely independent and irregardless and whatever. Right? So I'm never in the position where I buy a stock, then I talk about that stock, then that stock prices go up right after I bought it. Right. Like it just doesn't happen. So, you know, and that way I can sleep well at night. Nobody's calling me in the middle of the night. I'm not going to be on an episode of Billions. You know what I mean? Like I can just sort of live my life, right? So there's. But again, all those account. There's like a little bit of nuance there around a trust. Other than that, it's like the Roth ira, the traditional IRA and then the.

Fidelity account, the tradition standard brokerage account, the traditional IRA. Is that a Roth like 401k or 401k? Yeah, but Roth, because you said tax free growth in the traditional ira or is it tax deferred on that one?

Sorry, it's tax deferred.

Okay, thank you. Appreciate It. I wanted to clear.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Okay, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, got it. So we got a traditional ira, that's tax deferred growth because that's from your career that you just keep feeding into.

Yep.

And the company work for no longer contributes to that. That's just you.

Correct. Yeah.

And the max contribution is 26,000 now, or is it a little bit higher?

I say it's either 26,500 or 27 somewhere.

I'll say 26. Five for now. And someone could fact check me in the comments for sure. And then you got the brokerage account, which doesn't have any limits. So we're literally just talking about.

And then the Roth. I think the Roth is seven right now.

Yeah, Roth is seven. Yep, Yep. Let me ask you this. You are a married man now, so congratulations. You and I both got married on the same exact day. And.

Yeah, hilarious. It's amazing.

Yeah.

Same day.

That's pretty cool. When it comes to your. Your wife, are you leveraging anything on. On her in terms of, like, accounts, for example, like a Roth ira, like, funding hers, or do, you know.

So she works for the government, so she has her own set of funds she, like, her retirement can invest in. So I took a look with her once, and I was like, hey, out of these three funds, you know, this is the one I would pick based on your age and your risk tolerance and the kind of goals you have for retirement. We have a joint Robin Hood account together, so yet another brokerage account.

Okay.

But it's just like a place. So this is not a plug for Robinhood. It just happens to be a Robinhood Gold account. The nice thing about Robinhood is they. It's like a high yield, like, cash account for the cash in that account. So in one, in, like the same one account, we have, like, high yield savings and our investments that we both have access to. So it's like we kind of just killed two birds with one stone, which is why we did that. But yeah, I don't we just do that together because. Okay. That's how we combine finances. You know what I mean?

Very helpful. Okay, so Roth, traditional IRA brokerage account. When it comes to the Roth, because you. You personally funded that. When it comes to the different brokerage platforms, are you the type that just really loves one, or are you the type that kind of spreads out for diversification purposes or, you know, risk, things like that? I've heard all the different angles.

Yeah, look, you, like, you probably know the answer, but the answer is I'm Kind of an idiot. So I have a million of them. The reason why is so all my personal non YouTube stuff is on Fidelity.

Okay?

That's, that's where all my real like my personal holdings, Fidelity and then Robinhood, the joint, the one joint account with my wife. And that's it. In actuality, in, in real like truth, I have like six or seven brokerage accounts because I've been sponsored by six or seven brokerages for the YouTube channel.

Got it.

So I'll take the money and I'll put it in there to show a real portfolio and be, look, this is why this brokerage is great, blah, blah, blah. Right? So non ideal. But I have, you know, money spread all over the place, ideally invested in the same stuff. And I try to keep track of it. So the way I manage it all is like I download all the data every month. It auto populates a spreadsheet and I look at one spreadsheet instead of like six brokerage accounts.

Okay, got it, got it. So for the everyday American watching that is trying to not only decide the type of financial vehicle whether it be a raw traditional brokerage, we're trying to figure that out. The second thing is figuring out the location where you're going to hold these funds at. From your point of view, is it just a matter of, hey, you could pick any one of these out of a hat and they have all pretty good reputation or is it a select few that you would say, or is there a process that you would encourage someone to do to vet maybe a brokerage before saying yes?

Yeah, I think the best brokerage is the one you're going to stick to. For me, like just because I've been on Fidelity so long, Fidelity is who my employer, MIT Lincoln Laboratory used. So like we all got a Fidelity account as part of our retirement. Whatever. Whatever, right. So I started on Fidelity. I really like them. Turns out they're incredibly reputable. They've been around forever. Can't say highly enough about them.

Awesome.

But the truth is today it's like, hey, if you want a mobile first experience, like if the only way you're gonna invest is it's gonna be on your phone, check out Robinhood. Robinhood's great. It's got a great interface, it's got a lot of great features, very easy, you know, again I'm. But like if that's it, they're mobile first. If you're big into dividend stocks or allocate like managing portfolios, like if you're the type of person who thinks about portfolios versus just like multiple individual stocks. M1 Finance has a really great interface for managing a portfolio, not just a list of stocks. That's like kind of their big shtick. So really if you have a specific investing philosophy or a specific investing like mo, like I'm only going to use my phone. I don't like looking at my computer. There might be like, hey, go shop around for like the couple features you're looking for and see which brokerages have the best. But other than that, like if you're. And make sure you're sticking to brokerages with like hundreds of thousands of reviews obviously.

Yeah.

But between the Robinhood and M1 finances and the Fidelity and Charles Schwab's of the world, like they're all going to do all things, you know.

Yeah, okay, good. I like that. I like that response there for that. I think that's very, very helpful. So there's picking the types of accounts you're a fan of the Roth, you just had the traditional IRA from work and then you got your standard brokerage account. Now when it comes to the actual investments that you're making with the dollars that you now have contributed. And again, this is not investment advice. We're getting into a very narrow discussion here on how one can create wealth in a specific industry. AI, which is what you're solely focused on when it comes to how you invest in the AI industry. Talk to us a little bit about that process and then the allocation of how you're picking. And if you're someone that goes off timing or are you more so thinking long term, give us that framework there.

Yeah. So the actual framework is like pretty simple and difficult to execute, I would say. So simple in the sense that it's really one step. It's like research stuff until I'm really comfortable putting money against the idea, which is both, you know, that's it. I'm done with the framework. But Also it takes 40 hours of my week. Right. This is my full time job is sort of like I've stopped calling myself a YouTuber. I've started calling myself like a semiconductor analyst on YouTube. So like I really. The part of the, like the, the video job isn't the part I care about. Right. It's the research part. It's the do I have an idea here that's like worth investing in? Do I? You know, and that just unfortunately takes time. Right. But let's talk about sort of one level higher, how people can like not spend 40 hours a week thinking about this and still reap most of the returns. Right. So it turns out that the Nasdaq, which the symbol, the best fund that I like is qqq. Right. Already handles a lot of this research for you, by the way. Like stocks are picked and by the way they're weighted and whatever. So if a company is winning in AI, chances are it's heavily represented in the Nasdaq. And if you go back in time and you look at the NASDAQ versus the S&P 500, I can't remember the exact numbers for 20, 25 or whatever, but like in the last 15 years it's beat the S&P, like 13 of those 15 years. Right.

The QQQ.

The reason the QQQ. Yeah. So I'm talking about QQQ versus spy would be the, the equivalent S&P 500 tracking fund. Right?

Yeah.

So very standard. Anyone can and should own these funds. They're both great funds. Right. SPY represents the S&P 500. Nasdaq 100 is represented by the Triple Qs is how we call them.

Yeah. And the top 100 companies in the world, but with a focus on tech or. No.

Yeah, it's, it's like not exactly like that. I actually can't remember if like it includes international right now, for example.

Okay.

I know it doesn't include finance. So like one of the things, you know, S and p is top 500 US publicly traded companies.

Yeah. And based off.

Yeah. And it's like, huh.

Based off revenues of the, of the company.

Because based off market cap, pure market cap, pure size. Right. So like nothing to do with the revenue. I think they have to be like, profitable. There's like a few other, you know what I mean? Free cash flow, positive market cap, blah, blah, blah. The NASDAQ has additional requirements. For example, you can't be a finance company. So there's no banks in the NASDAQ. Right. Bank of America, Chase, J.P. morgan Chase, blah, blah, blah. Okay. The reason that ends up working really well is the companies floating to the top of the NASDAQ tend to be very tech heavy because tech has the highest margins. Right. So like if you're creating something that can be replicated for free, Right. Like copying pasting code and like selling the same code software to like thousands and thousands of businesses. You're going to float to the top of the NASDAQ because your market cap is going to be high and you're not going to be a bank, you're going to be a tech company. And there's. I'm, I'm oversimplifying, but the point I'm making is I only outperform the Nasdaq, it turns out, by like 2 or 3% a year, which is actually incredible. Like that's, that's really good results. But it doesn't justify spending 4 hours, 40 hours of your week doing it. You know what I mean? Like, if I didn't make a business out of doing it and I was just doing it for myself, I would be the biggest fool on the planet.

Yeah.

Spend all this time, you know what I mean? Because someone to eat out like 3% above the NASDAQ, right?

Exactly. They would be like, dude, just buy the QQ.

Just buy the QQQs and enjoy your life. You're free, right? Like so I happen to love the research. Like it's, my master's degree is in it. I have years of experience in it. Like this is stuff like I'm really passionate about personally, you know, Like I spend my free time building spreadsheets and playing board games and optimizing like Dungeons and Dragons stuff, right? Like my personality just lends itself very well to building financial models, thinking about the future, getting emotionally invested in technology, thinking about AI, playing with AI in my free time. If you're not that kind of person, drop some money in the queues and go live your life. Go enjoy your children. Go take that vacation. Never think about the stock market ever again, right. Allocate to the QQQ every month if you want to take less risk. Can't recommend the s and P500 enough. Maybe do something. So like the old advice on the street used to be 60, 40 portfolio, right? 60% stocks, 40% bonds. I believe that model is kind of dead. Sorry, I do have a 15 minute warning. Just, just so you know. Okay. I kind of think the 6040 portfolio is dead, but what's replacing it is 60% S&P, 540% NASDAQ or the other way around, right? Like you want to allocate more risk, 60% NASDAQ, you know, and then if you're really gung ho about one or two stocks, because you know about a lot about them, which we'll talk about next, buy one or two stocks, but otherwise, you know, you have 100 with the NASDAQ, 500 with the SPY. So you know you're going to be pretty diversified, right? Like now you're holding 500 plus companies and you can sleep well at night knowing that if any one of them goes down, you didn't just buy, blow up your Retirement. Right.

And so outside of the, again, the Roth, the tradition of the brokerage account, have you come across or learned any other kinds of accounts, like maybe the Roth 401k or like other, other accounts that might pique your interest in terms of, because it would seem like between the Roth and the traditional, that money's locked up. You're not touching that. Yep, that's for retirement. So it's really only the brokerage account that's liquid and that's where you're, you're investing. And it sounded like on the, on the hedge side of things. So if I asked you, how do you hedge your money or, or protect what you're investing in, is it purely the confidence and research that you're doing, or is it something like purchasing the QQQ or just having a certain amount of money in a high yield savings tucked away?

Yeah. Okay, I see. Yeah. So like, from a risk management perspective.

How do you de risk what you're doing if someone wants to like, follow the suit?

From a risk management perspective. Right. There's lots of different ways to think about it. So the traditional advice that like, people will give you is like, oh, make sure you have a diversified stock portfolio and make sure that if you're putting a dollar in Nvidia, you put a dollar in Costco or Walmart, because they're fundamentally different businesses. I think that's fine. That's not really the way I invest. So, like, I diversify across asset classes, not across stocks themselves. Right. Because what you'll find is in like a big drawdown. These stocks are all correlated anyway. For example, when Trump announced tariffs, consumer goods companies and semiconductor companies got hit. They all went down like 20 or 30% in April or whatever. You know, you pull up the stop chart, stock chart for any of these companies, you're going to see a big dip in April. So the way I like to do it is I hold some real estate, so I own my home, I have a mortgage. I bought my mom a condo a few years ago. I have a couple other mortgages as well. I have private equity. So part of my job, I think I said it a little earlier, was I do some research on the private side for family offices and wealthy individuals. I also am allowed to be in those deals. So part of the deal for a lot of the research that I do is, hey, like, if this turns out to be a great thing, I'd love an allocation. And most people are like, yeah, cool, if you have the money, you know, I, I'll connect you to the guy I'm buying shares from, right? So I. I have actually a sizable private equity portfolio and then public stocks, right. Warren Buffett, I think, said this. I can't remember if it's Buffett or Munger off the top of my head, but it's one of them. And diversification is a shield against stupidity. And I strongly believe that. I strongly believe, like, if you're serious enough to be investing, you should be serious enough to do the research to make sure you know what you're investing in. And that, to me is. It's not as complicated as I think we've made it out to be in this chat, right? If you're an iPhone lover, you should invest in Apple. If you believe that the iPhone is the best mobile experience, right? You should be an owner of this company. You understand the product that drives their revenue, right? You intimately understand their business, you know their services, right? If you have Apple TV, if you have AirPods or Beats, if you have the iWatch, right? That's it. You understand their business. They don't make other stuff besides what I just said. That's like 90% of their revenue. Everything I just said, go buy that stock. Be an owner of the business. You, you do understand as a user, right?

Mm.

If you shop at Walmart all the time, if you're like Walmart and Sam's Club, I swear by them because they have the best products, the best prices, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The best customer experience, go buy Walmart stock. Go buy it because you want to own the businesses that you understand, right? Walmart's a great company. If you look at Walmart stock chart, you're not going to be sad owning that business. I own Amazon stock because they carried me through the pandemic, right? Like, not to mention they carry the entire Internet. But that's a separate story. But, like, don't overthink it. What are the things in your home that, you know, love and use daily?

Yeah.

Should you own some of that business if you think there are a lot of people out there like you? Right?

Yeah, that's it, dude. This was extremely valuable.