Revealing My ENTIRE $13 Million Investment Portfolio | 30 Years Old

What's up you guys? It's Graham here. So, a little over a year ago, I made a video breaking down in extreme detail every single one of my investments: how I started, how I built them up, how much money they make, and the lessons I've learned along the way when going from $0 all the way to $6 million. I really tried to do my best to be as transparent as possible in that video because I have always been the type of person who enjoys learning by example. When I'm able to see how other people do it, it gives me a more decisive path to follow. Plus, we should all do our part to share what we know. So, here you go.

In the last year, when it comes to my investments, a lot has changed. My account has grown from $6 million back in November of 2019 to now over $113 million a year later in November of 2020. And wow, the differences over the last year are incredible. So, without further ado, here are the entire contents of my $13 million investment portfolio at 30 years old. Just like my last video, I'm going to be going over in detail every single one of my investments: how I was able to make it happen, how I paid for it, and how I was able to grow it to where it is today. My intention is to make this video as insightful and helpful as possible. Instead of a “oh, look at all my money I make,” I just think experiences like this are worth sharing. Maybe you're able to incorporate some of these things into your life as well, or you can just watch the video if you're curious how I was able to double my investment portfolio in a year.

So, with that said, if you guys enjoy videos like this and you appreciate the openness and transparency, just do me a quick favor: just take the like button and then destroy it. You don't need to go absolutely crazy on the like button like this guy, but just a simple little do, and it helps me out tremendously. So, thank you so much for doing that, and now we'll get into the video.

All right, so let's start this off at the very beginning with the first real investment that I made. I was 21 years old, and I bought a single-family home in San Bernardino, California, for $59,500. Now, just for some context here, let's rewind a little bit, and I'll explain to you how I was able to get $60,000 at 21 years old. I went and asked my dad for an advance on my Christmas money—just kidding, no my parents didn't give me any money or help with investing.

When I was 18 years old, I found out I was not going to be getting into college because of some really bad grades in high school. So, instead of going and pursuing an education, I went and got my real estate license so I could go and work as a real estate agent. At the time, it was 2008; the housing market had just peaked, the bubble was over, and I started my career at the height of everything, right before it collapsed. But for me, I didn't mind. I was 18 years old, and I had no reference to what a good real estate market even looked like.

But there was a bit of a problem because I found that not a lot of people were buying homes because the property values just continued to drop. However, I quickly found that there was an abundance of renters in the market because, at the end of the day, everyone needs a place to live. I quickly found my niche as a real estate agent helping renters. I worked 6 to 7 days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day just finding people apartments and homes to rent. Slowly but surely, that business built up. Those people ended up referring me to other renters, and within a short period of time, I was consistently making a few thousand a month in commissions.

Then, after about a year of doing that, I happened to sell my first house from a buyer I met while hosting an open house for another real estate agent. They ended up buying a home for $3.6 million, which meant that my commission on that deal was about $45,000 after fees and the cut with the brokerage. Now, prior to that, I was really nervous, insecure, and self-conscious about being a brand new agent in the business, believing that like, who would want to trust an 18-year-old kid with buying a house? But being able to sell that first deal just gave me the confidence to realize, like, wait a second, I have what it takes to do this. That just gave me this new surge of enthusiasm that would end up taking my career to the next level.

That's because just 2 months later, I ended up selling another house for $1.2 million to some renters I was showing around who decided to buy a home instead. From there, the business just kept getting better and better as more renters referred me to more people. The more people I helped, the higher the likelihood that one of them was going to buy a house, and in turn, I would end up making more money. Well, I continued on that trajectory, saving pretty much every penny I made, and within about 3.5 to 4 years, I had about $200,000 saved up.

Now, at the time, I was not saving that money for anything in particular. I just knew my commissions as a real estate agent were extremely inconsistent, and I didn't know if I was going to be making any money next month or where the next deal was coming from. So, I just felt safer keeping that money aside just in case anything were to happen.

But fast forward a few years later, in 2011, the real estate market was absolutely trash. Properties were selling for less than half the price they were just a few years ago. It was at that time that I began seeing some really wealthy investors going and buying up real estate. So, I saw this and I figured, well, if they're doing this and they have all of this money, then so should I. Since I was a real estate agent who knew the process of buying and selling, I figured this was the perfect investment for me to get into because I understood it, and that would also allow me to get a consistent amount of money every single month in rent. As an agent, I didn't know where my next commission was going to be coming from.

So, after some time of looking and writing offers, I bought my first property for $59,500. Because it was a bank-owned short sale, I paid for it with cash. I then spent another $112,000 doing some minor upgrades and fixing it up, and then I rented it out for about $1,400 a month. Since then, the value of the homes in the area have gone up substantially, and today it's worth about $300,000.

Next, let's talk about my second rental property. This is another single-family home that I bought shortly after the first one for $72,000, located in pretty much the same neighborhood. Now, here's how that worked. When I was first looking at properties to buy, I really only focused on a few specific neighborhoods that I thought were undervalued, that I could manage myself and had sufficient cash flow potential.

But there was a bit of a catch with this in that pretty much every single property listed for sale was what's known as a short sale. This is what happens when an owner of a property has a mortgage that's higher than what the property is actually worth. So, for example, maybe they have a $300,000 mortgage on a home that's now only worth $100,000. In most of these cases, the seller can no longer afford to make the payments to the bank. So, they go to the bank and ask for short sale approval; that gives the right to the bank to be able to sell that property to a new buyer at a much lower price. By doing so, that bank is able to take an upfront loss on the loan instead of spending years trying to foreclose on the owner and then taking back the property and then having to resell it back for a fraction of what they owed on it.

However, this type of short sale approval can usually take months or even years to get processed through the bank system. So, the way it works is that a seller would list a property, accept an offer, and then send that offer to the bank and then wait to hear back. Usually, months would go by before you hear anything, and when you do finally hear back, the banks would ask for a slightly higher price. At which point, it's up to the buyer to decide if they want to move forward or not. If not, the buyer is able to back out of the deal with no risk whatsoever, and if the buyer does back out, then the seller is able to resell the property to anyone else at the price the bank wants.

So, I pretty much took this as an open invite to write as many low offers as possible, get as many offers as possible sent to the bank, and then depending on the price the bank would come back at, I would decide at that time if the deal was good enough to move forward with. This second property was one of those offers. In fact, I would write an offer on everything that came up within a few block radius, and I would see which ones worked out, and thankfully this one did. This one sold for $72,000; it was paid for in cash, and because it barely needed any work, I just spent $88,000 on new floors and paint, and then rented it out for $1,150 a month. To this day, I still have the very same tenant living there from the very beginning. I have never once raised their rent. They've always paid on time; they always care for it as though it's their own. And now this home is worth about $300,000.

Next, my third property is a three-unit triplex bought for $125,000 during the same time as the first two, except this one was a bit more challenging. It was close by to the neighborhood of the first two, and it was originally listed for $105,000 in March of 2012. When I saw it come up, I immediately wrote an offer. I wrote them a full-price offer for $15,000 cash. I got the offer accepted by the seller, and then the seller sent it off to the bank, so we could patiently wait to see what they say.

Now, a long time went by, and during that time, I closed on the first two homes that I mentioned here, and then later on, the bank came back with an approved price, except the price they wanted was $125,000. I was also really strapped for cash at the time, and because I had bought the previous two, I didn't exactly have enough left over to buy this one as well. So, in preparation of maybe closing this deal and finding a way to make it happen, I sold my car to have extra money to pay for this one.

So, once I did that, I went back to the bank and offered them $110,000, and they basically went and told me, "It's $125,000—take it or leave it!" And if you don't accept it, we're moving on to somebody else. I remember too, back then, I thought about canceling this deal over that $10,000 difference in price because that, to me, was a lot of money. On the other hand, I didn't want to have sold my car for nothing. So, after some thought, I ended up putting it together and closing for $125,000. Shortly after closing, I was able to do a few quick upgrades to the units, and then all three of them were rented out for just over $2,100 a month back then.

Looking back now, I am so glad I purchased that property because it's been consistently rented since 2012, and now it's worth about $400,000. After that, my fourth property was bought a few years later in 2016 for $780,000 here in West Los Angeles. Prior to then, my career as a real estate agent was doing really, really well. I was seeing pretty much all of the past tenants I was working with beginning to buy homes as the entire market turned around and started going up in value. So, I saw a huge boost in commissions, and for me, that was a good opportunity to double down on everything that I was doing.

Then by 2016, I noticed the demand for Los Angeles real estate began shifting further inward, as companies were moving into what's known as Silicon Beach, and I wanted to find a way to capitalize on that. So, here's what I began seeing: When all of these tech companies began moving into Venice Beach in 2012, they began driving up the real estate market for Venice Beach and all of the surrounding areas of Marina Del Rey and Santa Monica. That caused all of the nearby markets to see a price increase as all of the businesses began moving their business further east because it was a little bit cheaper, and it's easy to see why.

Because when one area begins to get pretty expensive, all the surrounding areas get to see some runoff of that demand. So, I saw this as an opportunity to buy a home in the path of all that appreciation by buying a house just one step outside the current interest. So, I ended up buying a home for $780,000, representing myself in the deal, and then I spent another $660,000 fixing it up. I later rented out the house for just over $4,000 a month, and then I just waited and let the market do its thing to catch up to where I thought the home would eventually be worth.

Sure enough, a few years later it did. Property values in my area began to climb because people were outpriced of the areas further west, so they saw my area in comparison as a really good value. Then, as more people moved there, more businesses moved there as well, which caused more people to move there, and prices to go up. The entire area is really just seeing a boom of value, and right now it's probably worth about $1.3 million.

Next, my fifth property is something I featured a lot here on the channel, and that was the duplex I bought in 2016 for $585,000. Now, at the time in 2016, I was looking for an income property in the Mid-City of Los Angeles as an investment. I really liked this area a lot because it was close to nearby transit, it was close to a lot of new developments, and it was only a 15-minute drive from the beach. Plus, it was one of the few areas left in Los Angeles where you could still buy a home for under a million dollars.

Now, unfortunately, areas like this are highly competitive, so I spent 6 months looking for properties, writing offers, getting outbid, and just otherwise not getting anywhere. That was until this place came up. This one was priced significantly under market value. The owner was an out-of-town investor, and the agent he used really had no idea what this property was really worth. So, I swooped in; I was the first one to see it, I was the first one to write an offer, and I got that offer accepted at $585,000.

Now, this place definitely needed a decent amount of work, so I spent another $60,000 redoing the roof, the interior, and the landscape. By the time it was all done, I realized like, wait a second, I could go and move in here and then renting out the other unit would subsidize my cost of living here. Not to mention, I would build equity in the property, and I could use the garage as a tax write-off to turn it into a YouTube studio. So, I moved in.

Now, one year after moving in, I went back to the bank to get it reappraised because I wanted to do a cash-out refinance and lower my interest rate, and then also pull money out of the property. Well, long story short, the property appraised for significantly more than what I paid for it, and I was able to cash out an extra $230,000 back into my bank account, which is all the money I had originally invested in this place. That meant that after doing that, I was able to live in the property for $0 out of pocket, and it cost me nothing to pay for every single month between the rent of the other unit, the equity from paying down the loan, and the tax write-offs with using the garage as a studio.

Then flash forward a few years after that, and when my tenant moved out next to me, I renovated that unit for another $130,000 and then rented it back out for $3,500 a month. So, all in all, this is a property that I was able to buy for $585,000. I fixed up both of the units, I waited a few years, and as property values increased, now this place is worth more like $1,250,000.

Now, my sixth property was purchased in 2018, and guess what? It's yet another duplex! If you couldn't tell, I like duplexes. Anyway, I bought that one for $835,000 in Mid City Los Angeles. Now, this is one of those deals that I had no intention of buying, but as a real estate agent, I like to see everything on the market, and when I saw this one come up, it looked amazing. So, I went to see it in person, and immediately upon seeing it, there was so much opportunity. The listing only called this a one-bedroom, one-bathroom when, in reality, it's very easy to enclose the den to make a second bedroom, and there was a second bathroom in the property. So, I could easily get a few extra dollars per month in rent, and it was worth way more than what they thought it was worth.

So, I went ahead and made an offer on the property at a price that I thought was fair, which was $835,000. But other people were just as quick, and pretty soon they had multiple offers on the deal. But despite all the competition with the other offers, I just stuck my guns with $835,000. Well, sure enough, they did get an offer for $900,000, and they denied mine to go and accept that one. But to my amazement, a few weeks passed by, and that buyer ended up backing out! So, the seller went to the second-highest offer at $875,000, and by then that buyer had backed out as well because they had found something else.

So, after a month now of sitting on the market, they came back to me. I offered my same $835,000, “take it or leave it,” and after a few days of going back and forth, they took it. Now as of today, I'm getting about $5,000 a month in rent, and the property has gone up substantially in value over the last year, and right now it's worth about $975,000.

Now, after that, in early 2020, I bought my seventh property in West Los Angeles, and you guessed it, it's another duplex that I paid $2,100,000 for. Now, when it comes to this deal, here's the thing: as much as I could justify this as a good investment, at the end of the day, I did this one for myself. I was just outgrowing the one-bedroom, one-bath duplex that I had been living in for a few years, and it was time for more space. This YouTube channel was also really taking off, and I was consistently earning anywhere from $150,000 to $250,000 per month, so I felt that I was comfortable spending a little money on myself, as long as it was something I could see as a good long-term investment.

So, what initially started off as a $1 million budget to buy a home for myself quickly turned into a $1.2 million budget, to a $1.5 million budget, to a $1.8 million budget, to a $2 million budget. Now, here's the thing: when you first start looking at homes, it's recommended to see homes about 10% above your budget. That way you could see what else you could get, and also knowing that sometimes you could bring those prices back down. But the search for a home was not an easy one back in 2019. Here in Los Angeles, good deals were really hard to come by; there was just not a lot good coming up on the market, and every single month that went by that I didn't buy a home, my price range just kept going up for something that I could see myself holding on to long-term.

Now, during that 8-month home search, I wrote a few offers. I tried to buy one place that was a heavy fixer, but just nothing panned out until this place came on the market. I just happened to go online one morning and see a duplex come up on the same street that I grew up on as a kid, and it looked amazing. Now here's the thing: back in the day when I grew up here, this neighborhood was not the expensive market that you see today. Back in the mid to late '90s, my parents were renting their home for $1,500 a month. Most homes here were selling between $200,000 and $350,000 on the high end, which was considered a lot for a two-bedroom, 1100 ft house. Oh, how times have changed since then.

Well, Macy and I went to see this place in person, and immediately once we walked in, we knew it was it. It was the perfect location; it was walking distance to the beach. The front and backyards were both amazing, and it had a second detached unit on the property. But it was $2 million. I knew financially I could make it work, but it was way more expensive than I had ever wanted to go with something like this. So, against my rational thinking, I followed my heart. I went for it and closed the deal. I was able to negotiate the price down a little bit, and I also represented myself on the deal. So, the total price that I paid was $296,000.

In addition to that, I was also able to get a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at, wait for it… 2.875%! That means a big chunk of my mortgage payment literally just goes towards principal, and at that rate, it's pretty much free money. Now, on top of that, the other unit on the property is worth about $2,700 a month, and I was able to rent out my previous unit for $2,200 a month to help offset this cost. That meant my net out-of-pocket cost to pay for this home every single month, when you account for all that extra rent, plus the write-offs and mortgage equity, really only comes down to an extra $550 a month.

Now, even though I did have to put down a substantial amount of money to beat out another offer that they had on this property, there are absolutely no regrets. To my utter amazement, the housing market here has skyrocketed and now this home is worth more like $2,375,000—that's $275,000 higher than I paid for it just like 9 months ago.

So overall, I'm really happy with the purchase. I see this as a good investment in my own quality of life. I love the location and I've been able to do so much better work here just being inspired by sitting out in the backyard and just producing better content overall. So from that perspective, this one has easily paid for itself.

And lastly, I had one more real estate purchase this year in 2020, and that would be in Las Vegas for $1,438,000. That is going to be my new full-time residence in January. I made a video going over the exact reasoning for this a few months ago. But for anyone who didn't watch it, long story short, the COVID shutdown showed us that we don't have to live in Los Angeles to lead a happy and fulfilling life in business. During a spontaneous trip to visit a friend in Las Vegas, Macy and I were shown some really incredible parts of Las Vegas. When I started digging deeper, I realized there's so many more benefits of living somewhere else. Not only do I know a lot of people nearby that I could work with and collaborate with, but everything is substantially cheaper. There's no traffic, there's no wildfires or air quality issues, and I would be able to grow and expand this channel in ways that were not as feasible in Los Angeles.

And of course, I'm also not oblivious to the tax savings of moving from California, which has a 13.3% state income tax, to Nevada, which has a 0% state income tax. So if we just consider the financials and money saved by moving, this home should really pay for itself in about 3 years, not to mention all the collaborations I could work with other people in the area. So really, this was a no-brainer. In addition to that, the property values for homes like this in Las Vegas have been going up a lot, and now the builder selling identical homes and lots to the one I just purchased for $100,000 more than what I paid. So already, just by the time I closed on this deal, I'm up about $100,000 in equity, putting the value of my home right now to about $1,550,000.

And now here, of course, is where we get to the new stuff. I've been doing a lot of investing in the stock market over the last year since making the first video, especially when the market went down, and as of right now, I have just over a million dollars invested in an S&P 500 index fund and another $1.4 million invested in individual stocks. A lot of those individual stocks were purchased between April and May, and there was a big concentration towards tech and recovery stocks, and a lot of Tesla too. A lot of those just happened to go up significantly in value over these last five or six months, and so that's why that account is so high at this point. I'm not adding any more to that account; it just happened to be a risky allocation that panned out really well.

So now I'm putting most of my attention to the S&P 500 index fund as a safer play with less risk. I also have another $150,000 spread across California tax-free bonds, and I have $60,000 spread across several investment apps that I like to try out, including Weeble, where you could get four free stocks when you use the link down below in the description and deposit $100 because those four free stocks could potentially be worth all the way up to $1,600. And at this point, it's pretty much free money. So if you want free money, use the link down below in the description and get those four free stocks before the offer expired.

On top of that, I've started diversifying my investments outside of just stocks and real estate, and this year I've made my first angel investments. This is when you invest and supply funding for a startup company, and this year I've taken a big interest in what's known as the financial tech space, or fintech for short. Frankly a lot of these are the apps I love and use all the time and talk about here in the channel. Before I even knew I could invest in these, I also invested into—then I have a third angel investment in a credit card, which unfortunately I can't mention exactly what this company is yet and how much I invested, but I will be able to do that soon. So just make sure to subscribe.

Now, overall, my investments here are under a million dollars, but I treat it as something that's either going to be worth tens of millions of dollars in the future, or it's going to be worth absolutely nothing. So I'm not going to be counting any of my equity in these companies in the value of this portfolio. But I really believe in these companies and I look forward to being a part of their journey as they continue to grow and expand.

I'm also in the process of starting up and investing in my own coffee brand as well, so expect to see that in 2021. This is basically going to be my own version of the 20-cent iced coffee, except instead of paying someone else for coffee, I may as well just start up my own coffee company. But as of right now, it's still just a little bit too early for me to talk about or mention, but here's a quick teaser for anyone who's curious.

And lastly, I know this one sounds a bit crazy, but I'm keeping about $2.3 million in cash spread across high-yield savings accounts, CDs, and treasuries. Now I get it; that's a lot of cash to keep on hand. But I'll be honest, a big chunk of that is going to work taxes pretty soon, and this is also my safety net in case anything hits the fan or a really good investment opportunity comes up that I want to jump on.

But thankfully, I've been able to lock a lot of this money up in a 1.75% interest CD, so I'm not losing any money to inflation. Keeping this also gives me a really good buffer just to be able to reinvest everything else I make, and overall, I still keep my expenses pretty low, all things considered. There's also a few other random things here that I'm not counting as investments, like Pokémon cards, so we'll leave those out.

So anyway, between all of the accounts and investments that I mentioned, it comes to a total of about $13.4 million, with about $4 million in mortgage debt—not including the equity in the startup companies that I mentioned. Because like I said, those are either going to be worth a lot of money or zero, and it's not a good idea to count your chickens before they hatch.

Now, last year I ended this video by saying I was going to be making less risky, safer investments that were more likely to hold their value, and I guess I kind of did that. But the massive drop earlier in the year presented some really good opportunities that I had to take advantage of, and I've also been in a really good position to invest in some of these startup companies that I really believe in, even though they are riskier.

Now, in this next year, in 2021, I would really like to expand my index fund investing because I love the no-hassle approach of just clicking a few buttons and then you're done. Now my priority for investing is less stress and less work. I would really like to continue to be able to put my full attention back on the business and being able to grow my own projects, and I also want to make more angel investments in the fintech space as well. So the more time I have to dedicate to that, the better.

That's my entire investment portfolio, and I really hope that was helpful to give you more insight into what I look for, how I invest, and how I manage my money. Because like I said, I find these types of videos insanely helpful, and it's my intention to always be as open and honest with you as possible and show you that you don't need to start off with a whole bunch of money to build up a substantial portfolio in your 20s. It all starts from something small and finding work you enjoy that pays well and saving as much as you can and investing consistently and thinking long term.

And may I say, smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm! So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. As always, make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell. Also, feel free to add me on Instagram. My posts are pretty much daily, so if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there as my second channel, The Graham Stephan Show. I post there every single day. I'm now posting here, so if you want to see a brand new video from me every single day, make sure to add yourself to that.

And lastly, if you guys want four free stocks, use the link down below in the description, and Weeble is going to be giving you four free stocks when you deposit $100 on the platform. Those stocks could be worth all the way up to $1,600. Today, by the way, is your last day to get four free stocks. So if you've been putting this off and you want pretty much free money, use the link down below. This offer expires today. So with that said, thank you so much for watching, and until next time!