How to Invest €10,000: A Practical European Portfolio

Before investing: keep an adequate emergency fund and any money you expect to need in the next few years in an appropriate cash or low-risk account. The allocation below is an illustrative framework, not a universal portfolio or personal financial advice.

In this article, I will tell you how to think about investing €10,000. I wanted to write this article because many readers ask what to do with a first meaningful lump sum. I will first cover the common mistakes, then show one practical way to allocate it.

Do not assume that either cash or investing is automatically the right answer. Compare the current rate on a protected savings account with your time horizon and need for liquidity. Long-term money can be invested; emergency and short-term money should remain readily available.

Then also don't wait for the money to grow and to be available for a deposit for a real estate investment. This is advice you will hear a lot on many forums online, or from many experts. They say just wait for having enough money to invest in real estate, using this money as a deposit and then get a loan. I know from experience that this money, because it's sitting on your account, will just end up being spent. Many, not all, but at least part of it will end up being spent and you will never get your deposit for real estate, and therefore you will never invest money.

My next point is don't look for short term gains. A lot of you also can be tempted to use it to play, and I say play, in the stock market with this money, so trying to invest in some start that will maybe double next year, and you will end up with $20,000 dollars? Don't do that. You will just end up with no money at all at the end.

Finally, one other way that you could invest those $10,000 dollars is to really find a great investment like I will talk about later, like dividend growth stocks, and put all the money in one category of investment. Don't do that as well, because if something goes wrong with this investment, even if it's a great investment on paper, you might lose it all in a single blow.

So now finally, let me tell you how to actually invest $10,000 dollars. If you are not technical, if you are just an investor that want to invest money, want to make your money work for you, I recommend three types of investments that are completely passive, low risk, and generate a regular flow of income every month. Those are dividend growth stocks, real estate crowdfunding, and peer- to-peer lending. I talk to you a lot about those investments on this website, but I just will make a little tour of those investments.

Dividend growth stocks is investing in stocks on the market that pay dividends more and more, year after year. So they will grow those dividends year after year, and your cash flow will become bigger and bigger. So this type of asset is the first recommendation I have.

The second one is investing in real estate crowdfunding. This means investing with other investors in buy-to-let properties and then collect the rent, and also appreciate the value gain of the property year after year. This is a completely passive way to invest in real estate.

And finally, the third way that I would invest $10,000 dollars is to invest in peer to peer lending, in which you will actually lend money to other people in return for some interest. So as I said before, you should not invest all the money into one of those assets. Further, you should not invest $10,000 dollars into peer to peer lending principle. Because what if something goes wrong with peer to peer lending, that people just cannot pay you back. Then your returns will drop and your income will drop as well. So you will have invested $10,000 dollars but it won't be great at the end.

What we recommend is splitting your money into these three assets, but the easy way would be to just split it like one-third in peer to peer lending, one-third in real estate, and one-third in dividend growth stocks. But this is not what I recommend. Instead, what I recommend is really splitting your money to have equal income coming from the three categories at the end. What I recommend, I made the calculations for you using the yield that, or the return that those assets will usually give you, I calculated the best way to invest in those three categories to have equal income produced by all the three investments at the end.

For that, a basic rule should be to invest 50% in dividend growth stocks, so half of the money, so $5,000 dollars in dividend growth stocks, $3,000 dollars in real estate crowdfunding. Using real estate crowdfunding, you can basically invest very low sums of money in real estate, so that's perfect for our example here. And finally, 20% in peer to peer lending. This will give you a very equivalent portfolio that will produce equal income in each of the three assets.

Of course, for all the strategies and how to invest in all the three categories, you can check all my articles on this website, and also check my Youtube channel. Thank you again for reading this article, and if you have any questions or comment about it, please leave them in the comments below!