Our project is focused on creating sustainable portfolios for different age minorities: young adults, middle-aged people, and retirees. For our young adult, we filled his portfolios with stock and bond ETFs because ETFs are low-risk and stable, allowing us to grow our money over time. For the middle-aged person, we followed the same template–low-risk and stable investments–as the young adult but added real estate on top. This is primarily because, at this age, we hope to have a lot of money saved up that we can use to invest in property, which in return can make us even more money in the future. Lastly, for our retiree, we chose all ETFs with a bit of cash in case of emergencies. This is method is sustainable because it ensures that we will never have a huge dip in money, allowing us to maintain our life without much income.
Justin, Tareeq, and Tommy were created to display the differences in lifestyles and investment choices by three different personas due to financial background/upbringing. Our “upper class” persona Justin, has money in some stocks but also has the financial autonomy to place money into his kids’ 529 plan and experiment with venture capitalism. Tareeq and Tommy (our “middle and lower class” personas) invested more of their money into stocks that have steeper upsides, with the hopes that they will proliferate greatly in time. Tommy however was only able to allocate money into cheaper stocks while Tareeq could splurge. These characters display how investing money is available and lucrative for everyone no matter their financial background.