Welcome!

This is an email I send to keep in touch with people and share a bit about what I'm doing and thinking about.

This month, I'm:

• Dividing up my assets
• Travelling for free
• Habla-ing Español

You're receiving this monthly email because you signed up for it at robdix.com, or you opted in after reading my book The Price Of Money, or I added you manually because we've spoken one-to-one.

If you don't enjoy it, feel free to unsubscribe at the bottom – I won't be notified and I'll never even know!

📊 My "set and forget" investment portfolio

Years ago I came across the concept of the “Permanent Portfolio” – a type of asset allocation that’s designed to perform well under every type of economic conditions. 

It made total sense – but I ignored it completely. At the time I wanted to be mostly in stocks to maximise long-term growth, and semi-actively manage those stocks by keeping a close eye on what’s happening in the world.

Then finally, last year I admitted it to myself: I don’t have the time or desire to do this. 

And what’s more, I’ve got plenty of risk and excitement in my business and property portfolio. I want my financial assets to just tick along as boringly as possible, and I can live with getting a little less upside as a trade-off.

So I went back to the logic of the Permanent Portfolio and deliberately chose a blend of investments that should work in any economic environment. 

As a result, I never need to pay attention to the news and guess if we’re heading for recession or expansion, inflation or deflation – my portfolio should keep trucking along regardless.

The key is to diversify across different asset classes that each have different characteristics. I’ve chosen 5:

1: Cash: The safety net

2: Stocks: The growth engine

3: Bonds: The stabiliser 

4: Gold: The crash insurance

5: Bitcoin: The wild card

(This doesn’t include my property investments, which I treat separately)

Good times ahead? Stocks and bitcoin should perform strongly

Deflation/stagnation? Bonds should do OK

Shit hitting fan? Then gold may help and cash will cushion the blow

My blend looks like this:

60% stocks

10% bonds

10% cash

10% gold

10% bitcoin

I built it with cheap ETFs, rebalance once per year, and never think about it at any other time.

My asset allocation isn’t necessarily right for anyone else – hell, it might turn out not to be right for me.

The point isn't "copy this", but an insight I missed for years: Most people focus on finding the "best" individual investments, but the real magic is in how you combine them.

(I get nice and nerdy about this in my next book, which is getting towards being finished.)

Sandwiched between Rich Dad Poor Dad and The Four Hour Work-Week – two of the books that have changed my life the most. And I didn't even just plonk it there myself!

☀️ Our year of free holidays

This year we're getting 3 weeks of free holiday accommodation – just by sharing our own home at times when we were going to be away anyway.

I used to think that home swaps were too much hassle because you had to find someone where you both wanted to visit each other's cities at the same time.

But I didn't realise that through the Home Exchange website, you get "points" for sharing your own place which you can then spend later on somewhere completely different.

The website makes the whole thing super easy (says me, when my wife has done literally all the admin around it).

And as a happy side-effect, it's forced us to clear out some cupboard space and tidy up.

We spent a week in Gdansk, which is way under-rated. Bonus: I don't know if it's fluke, but we went to two restaurants that had play areas and monitors so you could keep an eye on your kids from a relaxing distance. This should be everywhere.

👍 Doing more of what works

My business partner and I have been running Property Hub together for 11 years. Over that time we've built up solid business that generates a good amount of revenue... but we've also been distracted multiple times by doing something that seems new, fun and exciting.

Well maybe it's just because we're in our forties now, but you know what's also fun? Winning. And this year has been a real shift: we're totally focused on growing by doing more of what works, and feel no temptation to do anything new.

Personally at least though, there always needs to be a goal: it's no fun just keeping something in a steady state, even if that state is highly profitable. So our new goal is to exit the business in the next 3-5 years.

This is a whole challenge, but the challenge (conveniently) involves doing what's best for the business day-to-day anyway: hitting our numbers, having rock-solid financials, and ensuring the business doesn't rely on us as founders.

🔗 Odds and ends

• These days I dictate the first draft of most things I write – meaning I can capture the ideas while I'm out walking, then sit down to edit and refine later. My new favourite iOS tool for this is Macwhisper – which works locally (for privacy), and allows you to transcribe YouTube videos as well as audio files and live input.

• I'm trying to upgrade my Spanish level from "can get by on holiday" to something more intermediate. It's highly frustrating because I'm beyond seeing any quick wins, and know just enough to know how little I know – but my saviour has been the "comprehensible input" method. In short: watch and listen to material you can easily understand, and trust that it'll slowly sink in like your native language did as a kid. Dreaming Spanish is an incredible resource for this.

• I'm not a fast runner and not great at endurance either, so I'm hoping a half-marathon will be my sweet spot. I'm training with the 80/20 running method – where 80% of training is done at very low intensity. Does it work? I have no idea – but it makes the training less painful, and is easy enough that I can listen to Spanish podcasts at the same time. Self-improvement double-up.

That’s it for now! Feel free to write back and let me know what you've been up to.

Cheers!

Rob

p.s. You can also follow me on Twitter or Instagram.