Investment for niece / nephew

Submitted by nosaltpants823 t3_yigsqg in personalfinance

If you were going to buy a stock/index for a niece or nephew to hold all through childhood, what would be a good choice? Currently do, 40% VTI, 30% VUG, 30% QQQ because they don’t obviously have to sell for an extremely long time. Graduate HS, Graduate College, wedding, buy a house, he’ll even longer if they are smart.

I’m bettering on growth and technology over there many many many years to come. Are I stupid? I want to lump sum birthday and Christmas contributions until 18 y/o now, to take advantage of compounding.

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Cruian t1_iuikuzb wrote

>If you were going to buy a stock/index for a niece or nephew to hold all through childhood, what would be a good choice?

100% VT (2 letters).

>Currently do, 40% VTI, 30% VUG, 30% QQQ because they don’t obviously have to sell for an extremely long time

Value, not growth, has the better expected long term returns. As does small, not large.

The idea behind QQQ makes absolutely zero sense to me, why do you think that:

  • Financials will underperform everything else?

  • "Which of the US exchanges a stock trades on" is a key component of expected future outperformance?

>I’m bettering on growth and technology over there many many many years to come.

Please read these on why that night be a bad idea:

Performance chasing is a bad idea:

• https://www.vanguard.com.hk/documents/quantifying-the-impact-en.pdf (PDF)

• https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/12/a-short-history-of-chasing-the-best-performing-funds/

• https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/the-smarter-mutual-fund-investor/articles/why-chasing-stock-winners-is-a-losing-tactic-for-investors

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comments/ikc6n0/so_you_want_to_buy_us_large_cap_tech_growth/

Tech revolutions:

• https://www.pwlcapital.com/investing-technological-revolutions/

• https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/123

• https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/156

• https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/183

Adding "tech" to a portfolio might be a bad idea: https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/tech-allocations-in-your-investment-portfolio/

Why are you ignoring the entirety of ex-US?

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trilliumsummer t1_iuimcg7 wrote

What has me scratching my head is I went to Invesco's site to see what their top stocks are (pretty much the same as S&P) - and they have a graph with comparable funds. QQQ almost exactly mirrors S&P 500, but at a slightly lower price and maybe a slight delay. Like why buy QQQ instead of S&P? It's er is 0.2% so not high, but you can get the S&P for a lower er which would widen the gap. I'm perplexed, unless there's just that many people that don't want to invest in banks.

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Cruian t1_iuimnv6 wrote

>but at a slightly lower price

Share price is completely irrelevant.

>I'm perplexed, unless there's just that many people that don't want to invest in banks.

I think a lot of it is performance chasing.

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trilliumsummer t1_iuinvv0 wrote

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>Share price is completely irrelevant.

I didn't mean share price - I meant with the whole what would $10k be if you invested it in these funds 10 years ago thing and said price. I meant growth.

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micha8st t1_iuim46h wrote

I think this is a very loving thing to do. Just make sure you do it right and you understand all the implications -- particularly the implications to college financial aid.

You'd probably want to create some sort of account to defer the taxes. My grandmother or grandparents created for me an UGMA. I created 529s for our kids.

A 529 is for post-HS education. It grows tax free and can be used tax free on educational expenses. And, you can remain the owner, with each kid a beneficiary. If they don't spend it all on college, the beneficiary-ship can be moved around. Or, unqualified withdrawals can be made, paying taxes plus a 10% penalty tax on the growth. Scholarship offsets can be withdrawn penalty free but not tax free. My first two kids got partial scholarships, and we were able to take money out of their 529s penalty-free (but not tax free) up to the amount of the scholarship earned in that calendar year.

And UGMA or UTMA would be owned by the child but administered by you until they reach the age of majority in yoru (or their) state. My understanding is that for financial aid purposes, this would count as their asset and under current rules would significantly lower how much aid they're eligible for.

Back in the dark ages when Reagan was president and I was in college, I didn't even know about the UGMA my grandparents had created. I don't know whether it was just grandma or both -- my grandfather died youngish of cancer, and my parents split book-ended his illness. Anyway, mom worked at the University, so my parents were able to pay 100% of my cost to attend. So I didn't even learn of the UGMA for another 10 years -- in Clinton's second term I think.

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