Quote:
Country: American, currently living in Malta, possibly moving to Canada in the near future
Income: highly variable, maybe 500k/yr
Risk Tolerance: high
Timeframe: some long term, some short
Debt: None
Current Investments: No traditional financial investments. Various staking deals and other gambling "investments."
Age: 30
I've always used my poker bankroll pretty aggressively and not really taken any money out of it apart from living expenses. After a few good years and with the availability of very high stakes online diminishing, I think I'm finally in a position to start pulling money out of my active bankroll and setting it aside for investments.
I'm looking for advice on two separate things:
1. Something long term to do with a mid six figure amount. Leading candidates right now are Vanguard funds or something like Betterment/Wealthfront.
2. Somewhere better than a savings account to park money that I'd still consider part of my active poker bankroll. This would need to be very liquid. I'd want to be able to access it in no more than a week or so.
It would be a big plus if free/cheap currency conversion were built into this. In an ideal world I'd like to be able to deposit to and withdraw from this investment/account in any major currency. If that's not doable, being able to hold multiple balances in various currencies would be good too.
If I were you I'd put most everything into a low cost balanced portfolio. Vanguard is great for this.
When you need to add to your roll you can sell whatever has gone up, which will move you back towards your target allocation. You should be able to sell and transfer in just over a week. Sales take 3-4 business days to clear and then another 3-4 days for a transfer.
A lot of people recommend putting anything you may need soon in super-safe investments. IMO if you have a reasonable cushion then you are better off in the long term just having everything, including your 'emergency fund', in a balanced portfolio allocation. A balanced portfolio is going to have better long-term returns than super-safe assets. It will also have bigger swings of course. As long as you have enough cushion so you still have plenty of assets when things are swinging down then you will come out better on average if you are more often in the higher return allocation.
If your income is correlated with market swings then it would make sense to be more cautious. If you expect to be making less, and more likely to be drawing down your assets, when the market goes down then it might make sense to be more cautious.
You might also consider sharing liquidity with other players that you trust. You likely have a very good reputation and could borrow from others to cover short term bankroll needs. I'm sure you realize this already. 8) This would help you avoid selling, and thus avoid some taxes, if you end up coming out ahead and don't need more poker bankroll after all.