25-Year-Old Software Engineer’s Investment Journey: From Stocks to Mutual Funds and Beyond

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If you would like to contribute to the DIY community in this manner, send your audits to freefincal AT Gmail dot com. They can be published anonymously if you so desire.

Please note: We welcome such articles from young earners who have just started investing. See, for example, this piece by a 29-year-old: How I track financial goals without worrying about returns. We have also started a new “mutual fund success stories” series. This is the first edition: How mutual funds helped me reach financial independence. Now, over to the reader.

I’m a 25 yo software engineer following you from 2020 covid times. Starting from your Re-assemble to your goal based excel sheet creation, everything was very relatable and very easy to follow and make use for ourself. I myself have created a couple of goal based sheets for myself and have been investing based on it for the past 3 to 4 years.

During this small inconsistent journey, which I started in direct stocks, with no idea, investing one day and watching the ticker at daily morning bell, and selling soon after seeing some loss or few thousands profit, I didn’t even know what I was thinking doing that. And then slowly stopped direct stock investment(even though I’ve one in loss in my portfolio, which I don’t know if it is okay to book a loss and come out or should I wait for it to breakeven.

The loss is around 20 percent of my unrealised profits of my entire portolio. So haven’t bothered much. But need some ideas on it.), and started mutual funds investment after reading your articles. Even in that, I wasn’t great. Started for tax saving in ELSS, slowly moved to midcap and small cap funds, and now nearly have around 10 funds in my mutual fund portfolio.

After recently reading your articles on index funds, and your caution on small cap funds, i’m looking to declutter my mutual fund portfolio and go with only these 3 funds.

I also contribute to my EPF at the required 12% of basepay, maxing out PPF, and to my NPS(Currently only my contribution, just for tax purpose – but a part of my retirement goals is expected to be fulfulled by NPS. Earlier my previous organization was doing a corporate contribution too, but my current org doesn’t, hopefully it does in future and saves tax and help my retirement goals faster).Two goals I’ve mentioned earlier are my retirement and house.

For retirement, I’m considering EPF + Part of my mutual fund + NPS as my investment option. I’m keeping my EPF as a debt allocation, and a part of my mutual fund is considered for equity allocation. Also, I’ve created an AUTO choice NPS contribution with aggressive investing, where the portfolio rebalances automatically on each year according to that period’s allocation set, and as I reach certain age the allocation itself changes from agressive to slowly concervative, which I see as a great hassle free equity + debt investment option.

For the second goal, I’m considering PPF + another part of my mutual fund as my investment options. I’m maxing my PPF account as debt allocation(not really for 80c purpose, honestly considering PPF as a safe + tax free debt instrument), and another part of the mutual fund contribution is considered for equity allocation.

The contributions I make to these equity and debt have been roughly allocated around as 65 – Equity/35 – Debt for each goal.

In this journey I’ve tried to squeeze out some amount every month towards my emergency fund.

Talking about insurance. Relying only on corporate health insurance for me and my parents for now, and planning to buy term for myself and health for my parents.

Parents are considering buying a land as an investment option on my name with the all my current investment and funds I’ve for emergency. I also think, this can be helpful to build a retirement house down the line. Don’t have plan to retire in metros.

Reader stories published earlier:

As regular readers may know, we publish a personal financial audit each December – this is the 2022 edition: Portfolio Audit 2022: The Annual Review of My Goal-based Investments. We asked regular readers to share how they review their investments and track financial goals.

• First audit: How Suhas tracks his MF investments and reviews financial goals.
  • Update 1: Why I hiked my retirement corpus target though my networth doubled since Dec 2019.
  • Update 2: After ten years of MF investing, Suhas is on track to achieve his financial goals
• Second audit:  How Avadhoot Joshi evaluates his investment portfolio.
  • Update: Why I redeemed from EPF to invest in Equity MFs.
• Third audit: How a single mom is on track to financial freedom
• Fourth audit: How Gowtham started goal-based investing & took control of his money
• Fifth audit: Why my financial independence & early retirement plans were postponed by four years
• Sixth audit:  How Abhisek funded his marriage & is on track to financial freedom.
• Seventh audit: How Rohit’s early struggles defined his investment journey
  • Update: I feel confident about my retirement planning after five years of MF investing.
• Eighth audit: Why my investments are still on track despite job loss and lower income.
• Ninth audit: How a retirement planning calculation scared me to take action
• Tenth audit: I made several investment mistakes but have turned my life around.
• Eleventh audit: My net worth doubled in the last financial year, thanks to patient investing!
  • Update: How I achieved investing nirvana.
• Twelveth audit: My financial journey: from novice to goal-based investor.
• Thirteenth audit: My journey: from a negative net worth to goal-based investing.
• Fourteenth audit: From Fixed Deposits to Goal-based investing in MFs.
• Fifteenth audit: My 10-year financial journey – mistakes made and lessons learnt.
• Sixteenth audit (part 1): How I achieved financial independence without mutual funds or stocks.
• Sixteenth audit (part 2): Lessons from my financial independence journey and future investment plans.
• Seventeenth audit: How I plan to achieve financial independence and move to my native place
• Eighteenth audit: I used the current bull run to reduce my mutual funds from 14 to 4!
• Nineteenth audit: How a conservative investor created his financial plan
• Twentieth audit: I plan to achieve financial independence by 46; this is my master plan
• Twenty-first audit:  I have made many investment mistakes but am on course to financial independence by 45.
• Twenty-second audit: I felt worthless six years ago but have achieved financial stability today
• Twenty-third audit: My financial journey was directionless until age 40: this is how I made up for lost time
• Twenty-fourth audit: Why I increased equity MF investments by 275% and reduced PPF contributions.
• Twenty-fifth audit: How I track financial goals without worrying about returns
• Twenty-sixth audit: I am 24 and started investing 1Y ago, but what am I investing for?
• Twenty-seventh audit: How we plan to achieve a retirement corpus 50 times our annual expenses.
• Twenty-eighth audit: I thought equity investing was a gamble, but now I aim to hold 60% equity for retirement
• Twenty-ninth audit: My journey: From 5 lakhs in debt to building a corpus worth six years in retirement
• Thirtieth audit: My investment journey: From random purchases to a goal-based portfolio
• Thirty-first audit: My investment journey: from product-driven to process-driven
• Thirty-second audit: How a young couple is trying to balance travelling and investing
  • How to achieve your travel goals without breaking the bank!
  • How a young couple tries to balance their personal and financial aspirations
  • How a couple reached their desired asset allocation after starting late
• Thirty-third audit: My journey: From Rs. 30 bank balance to financial independence
• Thirty-fourth audit: Our journey: From scratch to a net worth of 18 times annual expenses.
• Thirty-fifth audit: From a net worth of Rs. 6000 to auto-pilot goal-based investing
  • Follow-up: How I manage my goal-based investments in auto-pilot
• Thirty-sixth audit: How I retired from corporate bondage at 46, two years ago!
• Thirty-seventh audit: How I learnt to keep it simple and build a net worth 19 times my annual expenses
• Thirty-eighth audit:  How Abhineeth plans to achieve financial independence and build a house.
• Thirty-ninth audit: How Sahil plans to achieve financial independence by efficient tracking
• Fortieth audit: My Journey to a Ten Crore Portfolio
• Forty-first audit: Burdened with debt for several years, I am now aggressively investing in equity
• Forty-second audit: From Engineer to Librarian after Financial Independence and Early Retirement (FIRE)
• Forty-third audit: I lost six months’ income in F&O and ditched it for systematic investing
• Forty-fourth audit: My retirement plan to handle the harsh realities of the IT industry
• Forty-fifth audit: My investment journey: mistakes, 10 years of MF investing and recovery
• Forty-sixth audit: My MF portfolio is worth six crores despite multiple mistakes
• Forty-seventh audit: Saving, Investing, and Running Marathons: My 25-year Journey to Financial Independence
• Forty-eighth audit: Never Too Late to Start: How I Became Financially Savvy at 40
• Forty-ninth audit: My Investment Journey to a net worth 29 times my annual expenses
• Fiftieth audit: How I audit my portfolio without tracking returns
• Fifty-first audit: Financial Lessons Learned During and After a PhD
• Fifty-second audit: Investment & Financial journey of a 23 year old
• Fifty-third audit: The system I use to draw income and spend after retirement securely
• Fifty-fourth audit: From Start-Up Employee to Millionaire: A Success Story of Resilience and Smart Investing

These published audits have had a compounding effect on readers. If you would like to contribute to the DIY community in this manner, send your audits to freefincal AT Gmail. They could be published anonymously if you so desire.