The Disclaimer: “I am not a financial advisor. This is a peek into my personal strategy, not a prescription for yours.”

There might be a lot of images in this post, as I value transparency. I like to bring proof of what I say. Previously on Talk Like an Investor I brought up the concept of an Investment Policy Statement (IPS). Think of this as a promise to yourself to stick to your guns when the pressure of a 2008-style market collapse happens. You trust your plan, the math, and history that the market will recover and you’ll be fine if you hold. Or to stop you from HELOC-ing your house into Bitcoin because the sky is the limit.

I’ll repeat this here so you don’t have to read the IPS on the other post. Emergency Fund $20,000. Investments 10% Bonds, 60% US Stocks, 30% International. That’s my plan, it’s really as simple as that and I re-balance every January. Before we get into math I’ll post the funds. HSA website sucks so it was erroring on the fund page but please trust it’s S&P 500 or Vanguard Total US Market fund.

The Robinhood (don’t forget your free stock) funds are shown in the 1st picture so no need to repeat it. So lets look at some math before we break down into anything else.

First we need a total: We’ll add the 401k Loan to our balance, and I’ll explain that out later. Robinhood: $2,000, Vanguard: $210,216, HSA: $4,285, 401k: $296,247.
Total: $512,748.

According to this 2023 article at DQYDJ: The median retirement savings for Age 35-39 is $21,000.00, the average is $173,000, and the top 1% in that age bracket is $2,051,000. I guess I have some catching up to do.

So what does this mean our allocations should be: 10% Bonds, 30% International, 60% US.
$51,274 in Bonds
$153,825 in International
$307,649 in US.

Am I close? Well 401k is 100% US S&P 500 fund, the debt portion was from our move and home renovation it’s a huge pain to pay down in any kind of lump sum so it’s currently paying off via payroll, the 9% interest is paid directly back into my 401k and the money goes back into the S&P 500 so for ease of tracking we count it together.

The HSA is in a similar boat, employer stopped offering qualifying plan the amount stays with me forever, so it’s just sitting and growing. Due to insanely high fees at that location, I’m actually rolling it over to Fidelity where they have zero fees at which point the cash balance will be added to the S&P matching fund so we’ll count that as 100% US as well.

US so far: $300,532. Robinhood is a brand new IRA to take advantage of Robinhood Gold, Since it’s balance is relatively small I started it off in QQQ which is the NASDAQ 100 vs an S&P 500. Heavy Tech stock and slightly off our plan, but I will align it in Jan 2027. Then you can see the Roth IRA is also floating $5,500 in VTSAX (total US Stock Market), with the Inherited IRA pulling up the last $12,900 in US (eh $1,300 is an Australian company I’ll explain shortly).
That Totals US: $320,900. Slightly ahead of where we should be, but 401k contributions since Jan 1st are no joke and why re-balancing once a year is important.

The short and dirty on the 5 random stocks in the Inherited IRA are pure and plain, not recommended, Gambling. I asked AI what were 5 Moonshot stocks for 2026 and it gave me those. I bought roughly $1000 in each. We’ll see how that looks in 12 months.

Back to the important real information: International should be $153k, we’ve got $130,700 in the tIRA, and $15,400 in the Roth. That’s $146,100. The discrepancy makes sense when you account for roughly $1,800 a month into the 401k, plus $1,100 in 401k loan repayment, and the $2,000 in Robinhood. Bonds: $14,800 in Roth, $30,500 in tIRA is $45,300. Same track as the international.

Now under normal conditions I’d also want to balance my taxable accounts in a similar manner and include those numbers with these, but the entire purpose of my Dividend Snowball Experiment is to see if I can bring more passive income into my life while ideally beating the Total US Market funds, because if I can’t beat those funds then the dividends are pointless as I could just sell shares and make my own “dividend” out of the growth.

As always I recommend that anyone following this should focus on the Investment Order. Emergency Fund, 401k Match, bigger Emergency Fund, Retirement accounts. Its all in the Talk like an Investor post. Set and forget it is a powerful tool while you are in your working years, and growing your investments is key. Invest Early and Often.

In the nature of full transparency. My Wife’s IRAs are also at $143,573, which technically puts our retirement accounts at: $656,321.

This strategy is what allows me to feel comfortable building the snowball out of risky high payout funds as I attempt to reach my $1,000/m goal in dividends.

~~Miniwing~~
Stoic, Investor, Parent, Wordsmith