My Investment Portfolio: What I Buy and Where I Get Them in 2025

3 hours ago 1

This article will be all about the investment assets I purchase and acquire on my road to financial freedom! It’s been quite some time since I have re-capped my investing and it’s a great time in a volatile 2025 to share my investment tricks of the trade and the why!

Introduction – My Investment Portfolio

Lanny here! Today, we’ll go through the assets that I continue to buy and acquire, building my investment portfolio. Some of the investments provide cash flow, I.e. passive income, some actually may not!

However, it’s all about diversification and consistently acquiring assets – sometimes at all-time highs and sometimes at all-time lows. There is no timing any market for me.

Therefore, I’ll go through each asset I am acquiring, the WHY I am acquiring the assets and WHERE I am acquiring the assets. As a disclosure, I may have referral links, which are truly to help benefit you and are truly products and platforms that I USE and RECOMMEND to help you on your personal finance, financial freedom or even retiring early journey!

#1 Dividend Stocks and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)

This is the easiest one to describe and talk about – we are the Dividend Diplomats of course! Therefore, I consistently buy exchange traded funds or ETFs every single day and week. I have a medium term goal to have ETFs make approximately 50% of my dividend stock portfolio, with dividend stocks – individual stocks – being the other 50%.

What am I buying? I Buy the following every single day:

– Vanguard’s S&P 500 (VOO), Vanguad’s Dividend Appreciation (VIG) and Charles Scwhab’s High Dividend Yield (SCHD)

I buy the following every Monday:

– Vanguard’s High Dividend Yield (VYM)

Where do I buy them? I use SoFi’s Investing platform. I use SoFi as I have the buying fully automated. I received my direct deposit from my employer, t automatically gets transferred to the investing account and then the automatic purchases occur! I LOVE it and Highly Recommend – you also can receive free stock for signing up!

–> SoFi Investing: Fully Automated, Start with $5 and Earn FREE Stock!

I also buy dividend buy individual dividend stocks. I buy them fairly often, especially after using our Dividend Diplomat Stock Screener. I also acquire dividend stocks at SoFi Investing, as their app is so easy to use. I currently have, which my goal is to get to 50 positions, approximately 61 individual stock positions (does not include ETFs mentioned).

If you actually want to see the full dividend stock portfolio, we publish routine updates over at our Patreon page!

–> Full Dividend Stock Portfolio

Dividend stock and dividend ETF investing is my main avenue and main asset we are acquiring to reach financial freedom. The Party doesn’t stop there, though!

#2 Real Estate Investing with Fundrise

As you may know, I invest passively into real estate, which does create another passive income source. I invest $200 per month into the Real Estate Crowdfunding Platform called Fundrise!

I have been investing with Fundrise for OVER 5 years! I am now projected to earn close to $2,000 in passive income from the real estate platform.

Why do I invest in Fundrise? First, passive income. Another avenue source versus dividend stocks and ETFs to me is key. Second, it’s not tied to the investing markets. In fact, Fundrise is showing positive returns in 2025, whereas the S&P 500 is down so far this year amidst the tariff turmoil. Here are the annual returns:

Therefore, my wife and I continue to invest $200 per month into Fundrise, and we re-assess this each and every year. We may stop once we have a certain amount on the platform, but as of right now, Fundrise performs as we expect – not correlated to the stock market that we have so much exposure to.

Therefore – do yourself a favor and…

–> Invest with Fundrise and receive $50!

#3 Acquiring Bitcoin (Btc) – journey to 0.10 btc

Yes, you heard it here. I have also been slowly acquiring Bitcoin (BTC), as another hedge against currency devaluation, an increase in monetary supply and ultimately to have more exposure to different asset classes. To me, there is only one other currency to invest in and that is Bitcoin (BTC).

Again, not an enthusiast, but there are only 21 million that could ever exist, mining Bitcoin becomes more difficult and the adoption process is real. ETFs have billions of dollars, states are looking for a reserve and technically the U.S. has a Bitcoin strategic reserve. I do believe we are still early on and it’s wild that Bitcoin is nearing $100,000 again.

My acquisition is through a few different means. Let’s breakdown how I am investing:

– $2/day on Robinhood. Why? It’s inexpensive, for the most part, to acquire Bitcoin on Robinhood. However, I think you can go cheaper, but again – not trying to time the market.

– $5/Fridays on Robinhood. Why? Fridays are usually paydays and this allows another small bump to go in.

–> Sign up for Robinhood

When Bitcoin drops, though, I actually use the Gemini investing platform! I love their platform for TWO reasons:

1.) Limit orders are SUPER easy to perform, setting the price point you’d like to acquire Bitcoin at.

2.) The fee is 0.40%, which is the least expensive I have seen in the industry

Therefore, I do one-time purchases at Gemini. The best part is – you can receive $75 free for investing $75 into any of your favorite cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin!

–> Sign up for Gemini and Receive $75!

In addition, I use FREE apps, yes free apps to also earn Bitcoin:

–> ZBD: Play games, answer surveys, watch videos and earn free Bitcoin

–> Lolli: Earn free Bitcoin daily, earn Bitcoin for even buying gas at BP Gas station, my favorite – earning extra Bitcoin for EVERY fill up

Also, as a note – I recommend moving any Bitcoin you have to a cold storage wallet, to take it off the exchange! My progress is coming nicely, but I am not quite at 0.10 Bitcoin yet, almost!

#4 Option Trading

Oh boy getting exciting here. I do sell options. I don’t buy them to acquire or sell stock. I simply use cash or my own investments to sell options. I sell Covered Calls (I.e. I own 100 shares of XYZ company and sell a call option to someone) and I sell Cash Secured Puts (I.e. I sell an option to buy shares if they close below a certain strike price).

The goal is to NOT sell the shares for my covered calls, nor purchase the shares for the cash secured puts. The goal is to generate income. What is the goal for 2025? To generate $1,000 in option premiums. I am currently over $118 premiums received so far. Long road ahead, but it’s been fun and a great learning experience.

Therefore, on the cash secured put side, I have close to $4,000 committed to the program. On the covered call side, currently keep writing those on Intel (INTC) and Paramount (PARA) to earn a little bit of income there.

Where am I performing the option trades? Let’s only talk about the cash secured put side.

I use… Public.com actually! Why do I use a different platform? Theirs is super easy, have $0.00 commissions on options and in fact, they pay you a few cents for each contract as a form of rebate. This really makes it known how much money asset management firms make on option trading.

In addition – you can earn higher rebates and/or free stock by signing up for Public’s platform below. What else is great about Public? They have one of the highest yielding APY’s, offer Treasury purchases, corporate bonds, alternative assets, stock purchases and even crypto currency. Public can definitely be a one-stop shop if needed. (I am hoping SoFi offers Level 1 options soon).

–> Sign up for Public.Com Earn Free Stock, Highest APY on cash, FREE Option Trading!