A strong portfolio doesn't need dozens of funds. Three well-chosen ETFs, matched to a clear goal, can do the job.
Jaspreet Singh, CEO of Briefs Finance, built five three-ETF portfolios around five goals. These are educational examples, not recommendations, and investors can and will lose money at some point.
AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude can help you find and compare ETFs, but the better you prompt, the better your answers. Jaspreet is hosting a free livestream on November 17 to show how he and his analysts use AI to research stocks and ETFs.
How ETFs Work
When you buy a Big Mac, you make McDonald's owners richer. When you buy a piece of McDonald's stock, which trades under the ticker MCD, you become one of those owners.
You won't tell McDonald's what to do, but you'll share in its profits. You can even buy a fraction of a single share.
If McDonald's opens stores on every corner and makes money hand over fist, its stock price rises and it pays bigger dividends, or cash payments to shareholders. If it gets sued, closes stores, and goes bankrupt, you could lose everything you put in.
An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, solves that problem. It's a basket of stocks that might hold McDonald's alongside Coca-Cola, Apple, Amazon, Meta, and hundreds of other companies.
When one company struggles, the winners in the basket help balance it out. That's diversification, and there's an ETF for almost any goal you can imagine.
Portfolio 1: The Best ETFs to Buy for Kids
Nobody knows what kind of investor your kid will become, so this portfolio takes a broad approach. If your kids are young, you could lean more aggressive with the growth funds in Portfolio 3.
- VOO: Tracks the S&P 500, the 500 largest U.S. companies, for broad exposure to the American economy. Jaspreet discloses that he personally invests in VOO.
- SCHD: A Schwab ETF holding strong companies that have been growing their dividends. It offers slow and steady growth plus cash flow.
- A Vanguard total international stock ETF: Holds thousands of companies outside the U.S., since no one knows what the world will look like in 10 or 20 years.
| ETF | 10-year average annual return |
|---|---|
| VOO | 15.6% |
| SCHD | 12.5% |
| Vanguard total international | 9.2% |
| Portfolio average | 12.4% |
Invest $500 a month at that 12.4% average, and here's how it could grow:
- 10 years: About $107,000
- 20 years: About $450,000
- 30 years: A little over $1.5 million
You won't get that return every year, because recessions and market crashes happen. That's the power of compounding at work over long stretches.
Portfolio 2: Dividend ETFs for Cash Flow
Companies like McDonald's earn huge profits every year. They can save that money, reinvest it to open more stores, or hand it to shareholders as dividends - cash deposited straight into your brokerage account.
Dividends give you recurring cash flow without doing anything. The trade-off is slower growth, since that money isn't going back into the business the way it does at companies like Nvidia or Meta.
- SCHD: Belongs to an exclusive club of dividend payers that have paid a dividend for many years and raised it year after year.
- A Vanguard real estate ETF: Gives broad exposure to real estate, from apartments to offices. Real estate is popular with cash flow investors because tenants' rent covers expenses and leaves cash left over.
- A Vanguard international high-dividend ETF: Many overseas companies pay higher dividends because their countries are growing faster than the U.S. Jaspreet discloses he personally invests in this fund, though less stable economies and currencies mean more volatility.
| ETF | 10-year average return | Current dividend yield |
|---|---|---|
| SCHD | 12.5% | 3.8% |
| Vanguard real estate | 5% | 3.7% |
| Vanguard international high dividend | 10.4% | 3.6% |
| Portfolio average | 9.3% | 3.7% |
Dividend yield is a fund's yearly dividend as a percentage of its price. On top of that, dividends from these three funds have grown about 6.5% a year on average.
Invest $500 a month, and if those returns held, here's what it could look like:
- 10 years: About $100,000, paying about $3,700 a year
- 20 years: About $356,000, paying about $13,200 a year
- 30 years: A little over $1 million, paying a little over $37,000 a year in passive income
Portfolio 3: Growth ETFs
Growth companies reinvest nearly everything they earn to win customers and market share as fast as possible. Many show $0 in profit because of it.
That means more volatility, more upside, and more risk that some go bankrupt when markets turn.
- VUG: A Vanguard fund focused on high-growth companies racing to grow their users and customers.
- QQQ: Tracks the Nasdaq 100, the 100 largest non-financial companies in the market, mostly tech. They reinvest heavily to take advantage of AI and changing technology.
- A Vanguard small-cap growth ETF: Focuses on smaller companies trying to grow as big as possible, as fast as possible.
| ETF | 10-year average annual return |
|---|---|
| VUG | 18.3% |
| QQQ | 21% |
| Vanguard small-cap growth | 10.9% |
| Portfolio average | A little over 16% |
There's an extra warning here. The last 10 years were exceptional, with long stretches of low interest rates that let growth companies borrow cheaply and pushed valuations higher.
A decade of higher rates and slower growth would hit these funds hardest. If that 16% average did hold, $500 a month could grow to:
- 10 years: About $127,000
- 20 years: About $692,000
- 30 years: Over $3.1 million
Portfolio 4: Slow and Steady Growth
This one is for investors worried about a recession or even a decade-long slowdown. They'd rather own value-based companies and steady growers than lose sleep over volatility.
- A Vanguard total bond market ETF: Gives exposure to bonds, which are loans to governments and companies. A stock makes you an owner, while a bond pays you set interest no matter how much the borrower earns, unless it defaults.
- VIG: The Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF holds companies with a long history of raising their dividends, which suggests healthy, growing profits.
- VOO: Broad exposure to the American economy, which Jaspreet calls the strongest economy with the strongest government and military in the world.
| ETF | 10-year average annual return |
|---|---|
| Vanguard total bond market | 1.2% |
| VIG | About 13.2% |
| VOO | A little over 15% |
| Portfolio average | About 10% |
Bonds earned little because most of the last decade had low interest rates. At a 10% average, slow and steady growth with $500 a month could reach:
- 10 years: About $96,000
- 20 years: About $344,000
- 30 years: Just under $1 million
Portfolio 5: ETFs for Protection Against a Weaker Dollar
The U.S. dollar isn't backed by gold. It's backed by a promise, and the government keeps spending money it doesn't have, with more than $40 trillion in national debt.
That spending means more money gets printed. More dollars don't mean more wealth, so each dollar loses value and prices rise.
- GLD: Gives exposure to gold, the traditional hedge against a weaker U.S. dollar.
- A Vanguard total international ETF: A broad bet on everything outside the U.S.
- A TIPS ETF: Holds Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, government bonds whose interest rises when inflation rises and falls when it falls.
| ETF | 10-year average annual return |
|---|---|
| GLD | About 12.1% |
| Vanguard total international | About 9.2% |
| TIPS ETF | 2.2% |
| Portfolio average | 7.9% |
TIPS and gold looked unattractive for years, because inflation only became a real worry after the pandemic. At a 7.9% average, $500 a month could grow to:
- 10 years: About $86,500
- 20 years: About $272,000
- 30 years: About $660,000
All Five ETF Portfolios Side by Side
| Goal | ETFs | 10-year average | $500 a month after 30 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kids | VOO, SCHD, Vanguard total international | 12.4% | A little over $1.5 million |
| Cash flow | SCHD, Vanguard real estate, Vanguard international high dividend | 9.3% | A little over $1 million |
| Growth | VUG, QQQ, Vanguard small-cap growth | A little over 16% | Over $3.1 million |
| Slow and steady | Vanguard total bond, VIG, VOO | About 10% | Just under $1 million |
| Dollar protection | GLD, Vanguard total international, TIPS ETF | 7.9% | About $660,000 |
These projections assume the last 10 years repeat, and they never will exactly. They're a starting point for your research, not a forecast.
The System That Makes Any ETF Portfolio Work
Investing has risks, and people get emotional. Jaspreet's answer is always be buying, or ABB.
Set up an automatic investment every week, two weeks, or month. Keep buying when markets are up, down, or sideways, in booms and recessions, and no matter who's in the White House.
When markets boom, some investors buy more while others wait for a pullback. When markets fall, some rush in while others wait for things to get worse.
ABB skips that market-timing game. Paired with good ETFs, it has been a proven way to build wealth over the long run.
Choosing which ETFs belong in your plan takes research, and AI can make that research faster and sharper. Jaspreet will show how he does it live at his free November 17 livestream, and investors who attend live get his team's top 10 AI prompts.
Pick the portfolio that matches your goal, automate it, and keep accumulating, no matter what the market is doing.
