23H·

Portfolio Overview

Hi everyone,

I often read posts here where people ask for feedback, but the story behind them is missing. That’s why today I’d like to share my own portfolio—and my story—in a completely transparent way.


A little about me:

I’m 31 years old and have been active on GQ for quite some time. My current net worth of just under 1.28 million euros is the result of my own hard work. Even as a child, I would occasionally try out potentially profitable business ideas on the side to earn some money—and six years ago, I took the plunge into self-employment.


I now have two companies in different industries. It became clear to me quite early on that I needed a high, recurring active income if I wanted to build up a certain level of wealth, so I left my full-time job fairly early on.


For the next 12 months, I’m planning on a monthly income of approximately 30,000 euros. In addition, I naturally have recurring income, which can fluctuate up or down over the long term.


My goal is to continue growing this wealth prudently so that I can eventually live entirely off the dividends. Currently, for tax reasons, I hold portions of two stocks ($MSFT (-0,5 %) and $NOVO B (-0,27 %) ) are held as individual positions in my holding account, and the rest is held in my personal account.


My Strategy and the Core of the Portfolio

I follow a classic core-satellite approach. The core—which I intend to use later as a kind of pension substitute—consists of two ETFs: the $HMWO (-0,37 %) and the $QQQ. (+0,72 %) I’m aware that these two holdings overlap; I continue to contribute to both monthly via a savings plan.


The individual stocks and my problem children

When it comes to individual stocks, I look for a combination of long-term trends and reliable cash flow. On the one hand, I deliberately overweight tech stocks and future classics such as $MSFT (-0,5 %) , $GOOGL (+0,89 %) , $NVDA (+1,14 %) , $META (-2,33 %) , $AMZN (+1,11 %) and $AAPL (-0,53 %) , because I am firmly convinced that these industries will continue to perform well in the coming years.


For my dividend strategy and the necessary cash flow, I’ve invested in quality stocks such as $ALV (-1,79 %) , $MUV2, $NOVO B (-0,27 %) and $UNH (+0,31 %) in my portfolio. This is complemented by classic dividend-paying stocks such as $BATS (-0,49 %) , $SIE (-0,71 %) , $ARCC (-1,1 %) and $O (-0,9 %).


But let’s be honest: values like $MPW (-7,22 %)
$PYPL (-0,97 %) , $BAYN (-2,14 %) or gambling $LILM aren’t performing at all as once hoped.


In the crypto sector, $BTC (-0,32 %) as the largest holding, along with a small amount of $SOL (-1,88 %) and $XRP (-1,5 %) the whole thing—in the future, I’ll consolidate everything into the position $BTC (-0,32 %) and add a little $4GLD (+1,09 %) to it.


What’s Next

At the end of this month, I’m expecting a large incoming payment of around 50,000 euros. I’d like to split the amount and invest it both in the $HMWO (-0,37 %) as well as specifically into my dividend stocks to further strengthen the foundation.

The goal is to reach a portfolio value of 1.5 million by the end of the year.


Feel free to share your thoughts—I look forward to the discussion :-)

27Positions
1 280 261,12 €
30,94 %
50
56 Commentaires

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I'm currently looking for a millionaire woman—marriage down the road isn't out of the question...😍💐
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@Meli94 Are you smiling at me or at me?
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@Crash-Propheteus That's up to you to decide 😉
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@Crash-Propheteus It’s often the other way around. A woman looks for a guy with money.
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@Crash-Propheteus between the ages of 90 and 95 🤪
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@income_magician_2493 who likes to have a drink or two and can't swim.
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I feel like there's something missing when it comes to emerging markets. I'm pretty bullish on them for the next few years. I think they'll outperform the U.S.
The $5MVL would be a good fit for your portfolio.
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@Olli68 Thanks! I'll check that out ☺️
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I respect your success, but what's with all those small-cap stocks in your portfolio? That actually falls under the category of "no matter what happens, it's irrelevant to your success or failure."
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@DonkeyInvestor You're absolutely right about that.
I think it's a combination of "not wanting to admit yet that these positions need to be closed" and "possibly expanding positions."

At what point do you consider a position to be small change?
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@Meli94 All under 10k.
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@DonkeyInvestor Little donkey, "get those animals out of here"—right!? 😂
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@DonkeyInvestor Good point 👍🏽
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Congratulations on your success and your investment portfolio! That's an amazing achievement at your age!😊
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@Max095 dankeschön 😇
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To the 8-digit number🗝
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@PipDuke That would definitely be a tough goal
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Thanks for sharing your portfolio—and even a little bit of your life story. Investors like you are what make this app appealing to me. Best regards
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@Fabrikarbeiter Sure, if anyone's interested, I can share some more insights ☺️
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@Meli94 You're quite the motivator because you perfectly combine earning money with investing it. Very refreshing!
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@Fabrikarbeiter Thank you very much :)
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Strong portfolio. In which sectors do you work with your companies? And are you going to hold onto $MPW or dump it? So, are you still convinced, or not anymore?
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@Sebbster Thank you very much!

I work exclusively in the digital sector :)
I think I'll be getting rid of Medical this year; unfortunately, the problems we've had with the (main) tenant over the past few years still haven't really been resolved
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@Meli94 The only upside is that losses in the MPW account are offset against dividends 😅
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@Simpson Yeah, it's been tough with that stock—at least it's dropped so low by now that I don't have to see it at the top of my list every day 😅
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@Meli94 I pulled the plug myself at €4, taking a big loss 😅
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@Simpson I think it's going to hit me a little harder—too bad :D
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@Meli94 Do you sell services or do you sell products online? Because 30,000 is a really large amount of money for a single month income
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@SquarePants we offer digital services through our agency and yes, it's very profitable
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@Meli94 great! I read something about marketing in another comment. I work in marketing too. I build websites haha.
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@SquarePants we built and sold websites as well, it's a good market
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@Meli94 maybe I need to increase my prices 😂
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Very nice!
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That’s really cool. You’ve thought this through perfectly. I assume you’re not contributing to a statutory pension plan and are therefore handling everything yourself as part of your private retirement planning—that’s great! 👈

The portfolio will certainly run its course and continue to perform more than respectably. As an entrepreneur, however, it’s very important in this context to limit your personal liability risks arising from your business ventures. You’ve probably already done that—you mention a holding portfolio, so you likely already have a multi-tiered ownership structure where the subordinate LLCs limit liability, while you can funnel 2% (?) of the profits up to the holding company.

I’d be interested to know how you structure this holding portfolio and how you plan to organize future distributions to your personal accounts without being overly taxed.
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@NichtRelevant That's correct; the operating companies were—are—and will always be limited liability companies (GmbHs).

The focus is on 1.) employee satisfaction, 2.) customer satisfaction, and 3.) profitability; the concept has proven quite profitable to date and is resilient in the long term.

Exactly—profits are then funneled upward at a tax rate of just under 1.5% and transferred to the holding company’s account.

Good question—the tax bill always catches up with you eventually, so I’m not focusing on that right now. I’m purely focused on growth and leveraging the “pre-tax effect” through more capital that can be put to work, plus a knack for picking individual stocks—that should yield good results in the future 😁

Alternatively, the money will be reinvested in new companies, real estate, or other things… let’s see 😇
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@Meli94 Yes, using the holding company as a “piggy bank” does provide a tax deferral effect, which is definitely very beneficial.

A real estate investment made through the holding company certainly makes sense, since the tax burden on profits within the holding company can be reduced through depreciation.

However, when income is (later) distributed to the individual level, the tax authorities will indeed step in. Presumably, a managing director’s salary is the simplest option. Alternatively, you could first withdraw any private loans granted to the company (if any) tax-free and pay interest on them at the minimum permissible rate, so that only capital gains tax applies to this interest.

👉 Please keep us posted. I find the topic of holding companies very interesting, and unfortunately, it hasn’t been discussed much here in the forum so far. 😉
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@NichtRelevant That's right—real estate is actually still a bit of uncharted territory for me. Let's see what my 40s have in store for me. Until then, I'll keep building up my savings 😇
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@Meli94 Your post kept me thinking a bit last night, since I do see a few parallels in my own life story. At 30, though, I wasn’t quite at the point where I had a holding company. 😅

I don’t want to say too much about the portfolio—I think you’re handling that very well on your own. Rather, I’d like to share a few “words of wisdom,” even if you might not need them either. (Note: The list might sound like a string of concerns, but I think you can put it into perspective.)

1) You’re in a different league than many of the other forum members here (This is just an observation, not a judgment). That’s not necessarily or primarily due to the size of your portfolio, but rather to the fact that you’re managing your retirement savings entirely on your own. For most people here, starting at age 65 or 68, their portfolio serves as a nice supplement to their statutory pension. For you, it will eventually have to cover all of your income needs. So you simply need a larger portfolio than other people, but of course you have the advantage that you don’t have to contribute to a failing pension system and, above all, you can make flexible contributions to your portfolio depending on your business activities.
Note: I actually don’t like to talk about retirement planning, since that sounds totally negative to me—namely, like something far off and associated with old age. “Financial independence” sounds much better, and in the end, it’s the same—or even better—for you, since you’ll hopefully be financially free well before the statutory retirement age and will also have much more flexibility with your private retirement plan.

2) I’ve written about liability before, but depending on your industry, it can fluctuate cyclically over the years. From my own experience (at least that’s how it was for me), you sometimes have the reflex to prop up a business that isn’t running at 100% after a few good years using your personal assets. This is where it gets dangerous if those assets are meant for your personal retirement savings. My advice in such cases would be to scale back a bit rather than pouring too much money back into the company. Even though it’s hard—I realize that (contrary to popular belief) you get attached to employees, especially if you’ve invested a lot of time and money in their training and, in a company with flat hierarchies, you also form personal bonds with them.

3) As a precaution, I would NOT view the company as part of my retirement plan—in other words, I would NOT count on substantial proceeds from a sale. Many owners expect enormous proceeds from selling their life’s work and are then totally disappointed when a sale doesn’t yield the projected amounts. I’d therefore rather plan on “0” and be happy if the sale brings in additional, previously unplanned funds. Putting the company in good hands and ensuring its continued existence would be more important to me than a high sale price (though, in your case, that’s still quite a while off).

4) With two companies and a holding company, you’ll have your hands full. Please don’t neglect your personal life—back “then,” I was almost constantly working and on the go. Looking back, I wish I’d spent more time with friends and family. I almost “missed out” on my kids, since my wife was also constantly working and living elsewhere. What I’m trying to say is: It’s important to take on responsibility, get things moving, and make them happen, but you shouldn’t be so disciplined that you completely forget about life.

I’ll send you a follow request—I’m curious to see how things go for you. 👈
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Thanks for your message and your honest words, @NichtRelevant 🙏
It feels good to talk to someone who’s been down this path themselves. I’ve found myself agreeing with many of your points, though over the years I’ve set up my system with fairly strict separation

Financial freedom: I absolutely agree with you. That captures it much better than “retirement planning,” and it’s precisely this independence that’s the goal here.

Liability & Reserves: My personal savings are completely separate from the business. To ensure I don’t have to dip into my personal assets for salaries, licenses, or taxes in an emergency, I operate the companies using an account-based model with fixed buffers.

Sales Value: I actually plan mentally with a value of €0. Agencies have hardly any intrinsic value without the people behind them anyway. Since we’re completely bootstrapped, we could wind everything up cleanly in the worst-case scenario—I’ve actually done this before. The companies are currently liquid cash flow machines, not retirement assets. Following the credo, “Whoever plants something that bears no fruit is indulging in a misguided form of luxury,” they must continuously support themselves.

'Life-Business Balance': The pure “tunnel phase” only existed in the early days. Today, I have fixed working hours like a traditional employee, delegate a lot to the team, and plan 3–4 vacations a year. Weekends are reserved for family and friends.

In the end, everything has its time. And if, contrary to expectations, things do go wrong, I’ll just go back to a normal salaried job and resume making regular pension contributions :D
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@Meli94 Awesome! You’re clearly much further along and more organized than I was back then. I don’t think you’ll ever go back to being an employee—but I think you know that yourself. 😉

I wish you the best of luck! If you find the time, take a look into real estate. That could be another boost for you. It’s true that as a self-employed person, you always have a harder time with banks than an employee or civil servant, but in the long run, it’s worth it and it’s very easy to budget for.

Have a great rest of your Sunday! 😊
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@NichtRelevant I'll do that, thanks :)
As things stand now, I'm planning to look into real estate in my late 30s or early 40s... we'll see :)
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Hi. You've already built up a good-sized portfolio; your core holdings are solid, and the fundamentals are strong, it’s better to manage a portfolio like this passively—that is, sell off small positions, allocate the money across both ETFs, and simply let the money keep working for you. With an average return of about 9% per year on your portfolio, you don’t necessarily need to keep investing; just let it continue to run passively. Being active here—or becoming active—could potentially do more harm than good. Best regards
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@Dukke Thanks, Dukke—I'm following the plan ☺️📈
Congratulations, Melina, on the size of your portfolio 👍. There are two things I’d keep in mind: the ETF size of 500k in light of potential exit taxes when leaving Germany, and the “first in, first out” principle for ETFs when realizing gains later on. Best of luck going forward! 🍀
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@silverbug999 Thanks a lot! Yeah, that's right—I'm keeping an eye on both, but for now it's still "no big deal" 😁
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Congratulations on building up your investment portfolio at your age. That's a great achievement. And judging by what you've written about how much money your business generates, it doesn't seem like you have to put your entire life on hold to focus on growing your portfolio. So just keep up the good work.
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No front…. The only thing that stands out about this portfolio is its size, but that’s not due to performance—it’s due to business acumen. So, hats off to the businesswoman in you. May the investor in you be just as successful in the future 😉
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Wow, congratulations
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