We all want to live a great life when we retire. When you are in your mid-30s, there is a likelihood that you are a parent, have a job, or are an entrepreneur. Is it too late to start investing at 35? It’s not. This is the best time for you to maximize the amount of money that you bring home, save, and also invest. This article looks at the best investment strategy for 35 year old.
Best Investment Options for 35 Year Old
Invest in the Stock Market
The best place to start investing at 35 is in the stock market. In more than 100 years, investing in stocks has returned more than 10,000%. In fact, most of all people in the Forbes list of the wealthiest people made their fortune in the stock market. Warren Buffett and George Soros have made a fortune by investing solely in the stock market. The same is true with company founders like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Most of these people started investing in their early 30s or in their late 20s. To be successful in this, you need to do a few things.
- Learn about the stock market. There are so many books, but we recommend The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham and which also features Warren Buffett as a contributor. Another recommendation is One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch.
- Start small. Today, with companies like RobinHood, you can start investing with as little as $200. Look up the best stock investment strategies.
- Invest with a long-term view. In other words, don’t be a day trader but instead, invest in companies you can own for many years.
- Get immersed in the stock market. This means that you should always be in the know about what is happening in the stock market.
- Diversify across industries. Also, diversify across the various investment groups like growth, income, and value.
How to Create Your Own Stock Portfolio
To invest in the stock market, you can decide to create investment portfolio for 35 year-old. This is a strategy that is mostly recommended to investors who know how to research and analyze companies. If you are not good at this type of analysis, we recommend that you do the following.
- Invest in mutual funds. These are funds made up of a collection of many companies. Examples of mutual funds are those created by Vanguard and Blackrock. For example, Vanguard’s Total Stock Market fund has returned an average of 15% in the past five years.
- Invest in ETFS. Exchange Traded Funds are similar to mutual funds. They are made up of many companies. For example, the VanEck Vectors gold miners ETF is made up of the biggest gold mining companies.
- Invest in index funds. These are funds that track a particular group of stocks. For example, the S&P technologies index tracks the technology companies in the S&P 500.
- Invest in Robo-investing platforms. These are relatively new companies that allocate your funds automatically across the various assets. Examples of these robo-advisors are Betterment and Wealthfront.
Invest in Peer to Peer Credit as a 35-Year-Old
In your 30s, your goal should be to have a diversified portfolio of investments. This means that you should not be invested in stocks only. A relatively new way of diversifying is to invest in peer to peer credit. This is a strategy in which you lend money to people on the internet. The best peer to peer lending companies for investors are Lending Club, Prosper, and Upstart. The average returns on some of these peer to peer lending platforms is about 9%. Therefore, if you decide to invest $10,000 in such companies when you are 35, you will be earning at least $900 every year. By the time you are 50 years, your original $10,000 investment will be more than $25,000.
A word of advice: this approach should mostly be used for diversifying only. It should not be your primary source of retirement money because the P2P industry is significantly new and risky. You could also use the cash flow from these investments to reinvest in stocks or real estate.
Invest in Real Estate
When you are 35-years old, your goal is to have a better life for you and your family. It is also your goal to be thinking about retirement. In this, one of the best places you can invest your money is in real estate. The beauty of this is that when you have your own apartment or townhouse that you are leasing out, you are assured of having money at the end of every month. The challenge for investing in real estate is that it requires a lot of money. To do this, we recommend the following:
- Use the online real estate platforms, which give you an opportunity to invest in real estate from as little as $1000.
- Start small. You don’t need to start by building an entire apartment block. Instead, you can start by building a small house and selling it. You can also buy an old building and flip it.
- Combine with friends. You don’t have to go it alone. You can partner with your close friends and invest in real estate. Remember, it is always better to own 10% of a small thing than a 100% of nothing.
Max Your 401K
Another way to grow your wealth is by maxing out your 401K. In 2019, the maximum 401K amount you can make is $19k. For those over 50 years, there is another chance for $6K more. All this does not include your employer’s match. For example, if you are a typical 35-year-old making $85k a year, and you contribute the maximum allowed $19k in your 401K. When you do this, you will pay a tax on the $66K. Therefore, if you are in the 24% tax bracket, it will save you $4560 right away. This is the 24% of the $19000. If the 401K grows at a conservative rate of 6% every year, your investment will be worth more than $1 million when you are 78 years.
Also read: 5 Key Investment Strategies for Beginners
Side Hustles
Last but not least, another best investment for 35 year old is to have multiple sources of income. Fortunately, you can achieve this without even trying. For example, as you drive to work, you can activate your Uber account, carry a client, and make $50. As you go back home, you can do the same and make another $50. In a month, if you do this every Monday to Friday, you will have an additional $2000. In your home, if you have an extra room, and you give it out to AirBnB for $50 a night, you can make more than $1000 a month. You can write a book and sell it on Amazon. You can also start a niche website and make money from referrals.
Final Thoughts on Investment Portfolio for 35 Year Old
As a 35 year old, you have lived a long life. But, a longer life awaits you. In fact, you have at least 44 more years to live, based on the US expectancy rate. Therefore, it is important that you make quality and reasonable investing and saving decisions. While the methods explained in this article are the best investment strategy for 35 year old, there are others such as starting a business and creating online content like us.
