Name: The Portfolio Life
Rating: 4.1 (63 reviews)
Author: Christina Wallace

What’s in it for me? Learn how to build a balanced, more fulfilling life that aligns with your personal goals, wishes, and needs.

For past generations, the trajectory of one’s life was often much simpler. Graduate college with little to no debt and land a well-paying job – one that would allow you to buy a home and support your family. Stay with the same company for 30 or more years and then retire comfortably, supported by a pension and solid retirement account.

This was the blueprint that many of our parents and grandparents followed. Unfortunately, this pattern is no longer applicable to the working generation. Limited upward mobility, stagnant wages, and rising costs have made reaching traditional milestones much harder – if not nearly impossible.

So what can be done? The truth is, if we rely on political leaders or business executives for change, we’re going to be waiting a very long time. Instead, we need to get creative and build our lives using a new playbook – one that supports multiple different paths and meets all of our varied needs.

Enter author Christina Wallace’s concept of the Portfolio Life. A balanced financial portfolio is a collection of cash, stocks, bonds, real estate, and other assets that all work together to maximize returns for any given level of risk. According to Wallace, a balanced life should work the same way.

In this Blink to The Portfolio Life, we’ll discover the many different factors that make up a Portfolio Life and how it can lead to a fulfilling, happier, and more balanced way of living. Once we have the basics covered, you’ll start learning how to craft your own unique portfolio.

In the final section, we’ll finish up by discussing some important strategies to help your new Portfolio Life run more smoothly. By the end, you should have a clear picture of who you are, what you want in your life, and the plan you’ll need to get there.

The Four Pillars That Support a Portfolio Life

Wallace separates her Portfolio Life concept into four pillars: identity, optionality, diversification, and flexibility. Together, these four pillars provide a solid base for you to build a more holistic lifestyle. Let’s take a look at each one individually.

The first pillar of the Portfolio Life is creating an identity that is insulated from your job. In other words, understanding that your life amounts to so much more than what you do for a living. As humans, we love to group everything around us into tidy little categories. The thing is, our lives just don’t work that way.

Confining your identity to a one-dimensional job title is not only old-fashioned and inaccurate, but also incredibly limiting. When thinking about your own identity, the answer should always be “and,” not “or.”

The second pillar is optionality, or the ability to pursue multiple opportunities and life paths at once. Starting in childhood, there’s a common misconception that we have just one correct future in front of us – one that we need to pick early and stick with for life. As a kid, how many times were you asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The truth is that there will be countless paths that we choose to follow throughout our lives. Even if one seemingly disappears, new paths are constantly emerging, just waiting for us to take the first step.

Diversification, the third pillar, is an incredibly important aspect of building a life that is not only fulfilling, but financially secure. The classic advice to get a stable, full-time job at just one company is actually one of the riskiest choices you can make.

Don’t believe me? Look at it this way – if you choose a linear path, you’re putting all of your income, benefits, and retirement savings in the hands of one leader or organization. This is the very definition of “putting all your eggs in one basket.”

The longer you’ve been in one role or at one company, the more you put yourself at risk. Building multiple income streams is a great way to protect yourself, but it’s not the only thing you can do. This pillar is also about creating more diversity in your skill sets, industry experiences, and even within your own personal network.

Finally, there’s the fourth pillar – flexibility. While the first three pillars work together to create strength and stability, this final idea gives us the freedom to adapt and respond to a rapidly changing world. Anyone whose career is based on a single job will inevitably get stuck in the same loop, with “work” or “don’t work” as their only two options.

In contrast, people with a large network and portfolio of skills and interests have a much greater ability to change their priorities and “reshuffle” their life as needed.

Choosing Your Life’s Business Model

Each portfolio life is as unique as the person who created it. That being said, most “portfolio lifers” tend to fall into one of three categories, or what Wallace refers to as “business models.”

The first are moonlighters. These are people who typically have a steady full-time job that they pair with one or more side projects. Their more traditional day job provides them with financial stability, while their work on the side allows for creativity and/or income diversification.

Crafting Your Own Portfolio Life

There are many different ways to go about the process of crafting a Portfolio Life, but at a high level, the goal is to create a combination of work, hobbies, community, volunteering, and personal time that utilizes your personal network, skills, and interests.

Step One – 100 wishes. Grab a notepad and write down 100 wishes for your life. This shouldn’t be limited to just professional goals. Think about all the things you want to do, experience, create, or contribute to throughout your lifetime.

Strategies to Support Your Portfolio Life

Having your dreams, goals, and needs laid out in front of you is a fantastic place to start, but to build a truly sustainable Portfolio Life, you’ll need to put a few important strategies into practice – namely careful planning, periods of self-reflection, and an entrepreneurial mindset.

One very important strategy is to think of your Portfolio Life as your own business – and the core of any successful business is a carefully curated team that helps it run like a well-oiled machine.

Key ideas in The Portfolio Life

What is The Portfolio Life about?

The Portfolio Life (2023) is a guide to veering off of the traditional path and creating a well-balanced, fulfilling, and sustainable life that incorporates all of your varied skills and personal goals. Combining a practical playbook with self-help style coaching, it gives you the tools and motivation to achieve true work-life balance, preserve your happiness, and protect your future.