re: Funds vs Individual Stocks

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3) As far as life insurance, whole life is quite expensive. The benefit is, unlike term, it will live on as long as you do, provided that you make any required premium payments. The "investment" vehicle inside a whole life policy is probably better than just parking your cash somewhere, but not as good as a good investment portfolio. However, you are also getting life insurance protection. An alternative is the "buy term and invest the difference" stragegy, which requires you to actually invest the difference and to do it in a way that makes money. If you do decide to go with whole life insurance, you won't find a better company out there for that product than Northwestern Mutual.

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also in general life insurance isn't a particularly good investment. I would only buy life insurance if I had young children and a spouse who was unable to support themselves. Or if I knew I was going to die relatively soon. I would never buy whole life insurance.

It would be much better to instead of buying any life insurance to invest that money. Chances are you aren't going to die. And life insurance companies are notorious for not paying out if you do die.

The other reason to buy life insurance is if you work pays for it. I get subsidized life insurance from my work, and its like $10 a month for $750k. That is too cheap to pass up, especially as I have no exclusions, no checkup, etc.

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in general life insurance isn't a particularly good investment.

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Life insurance is, by definition, a poor investment. It has a negative expected ROI. But that's ok, because it's not supposed to be an investment. It's supposed to be insurance, which is a different thing.

Whole life has tax advantages as the cash value grows tax deferred. Also, you have the ability to potentially take tax-free dividend withdrawals and loans.

Universal life can be a good investment if you overfund the policy in your earlier years. However, the cost of insurance becomes so high later that the cash value tends to erode very quickly.

I have shares in IWF, QQQ, XLV, SPY and SPMO.

Shall I consolidate some of these?

I bought a few years ago. Researching it more some of the investments overlap. For instance Microsoft, Apple and IT based..

Any ideas?