Some good news: Today, there’s no excuse not to get started as an investor.
That wasn’t true in 1986, when I arrived in New York from London at age 23. Back then, Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price demanded $2,500 to open a mutual-fund account, far more than I could afford. Meanwhile, Vanguard Group required $3,000, and typically still does.
What to do? I got my start by purchasing six individual stocks through the National Association of Investors Corp.

AT LEAST ONCE A YEAR, I watch the hilarious short YouTube clip by personal-finance author JL Collins. If you aren’t around small children and can handle liberal use of America’s favorite four-letter word, check it out. Some may recognize it as a parody of actor John Goodman’s soliloquy from the film The Gambler starring Mark Wahlberg.
The clip, however, is more than just entertaining. Its content is what keeps me and, judging from the half-million views,

WHEN I STARTED learning about investing, I stumbled upon a book at my library that immediately grabbed my attention: The Lazy Person’s Guide to Investing by Paul B. Farrell. A portfolio championed by the book consisted of just two mutual funds—one stock index fund and one bond index fund, with 50% of your portfolio invested in each.
With only two choices to make, decision-making becomes far more straightforward. Farrell’s suggested 50-50 split simplifies the process even further.

LOOKING TO CONDUCT a review of your investments? Below is a five-point end-of-year housekeeping checklist.
Suitability. When it comes to the world of investments, the most common types of assets are stocks and bonds—but they aren’t the only ones. There are alternatives like real estate and commodities and, of course, there’s bitcoin, which has more than doubled this year. Which of these is right for you? Since everyone is different, the first litmus test is to assess the suitability of the types of assets you own.

Oh, index funds have a tale to tell,
Of how they invest and invest quite well.
They’re cheap, they’re easy, they’re widely adored,
But here’s the twist that can’t be ignored:
They lean on the work of those active and wise,
The managers, experts, with sharp, watchful eyes.
While index funds follow the market’s parade,
It’s active decisions that have the path laid.
Active managers toil, they measure, they scheme,
Allocating the dollars, fulfilling the dream.

THE STOCK MARKET HAS been one of my life’s enduring interests. No, it’s not because I try to pick market-beating investments. I gave up on that nonsense more than three decades ago.
Rather, I’m fascinated by the way we humans engage with this maddening market that promises both riches and peril, and which seems both ruthlessly efficient and utterly nuts. What have I learned from a lifetime of following the stock market? The sad truth is,

MORGAN HOUSEL, author of The Psychology of Money, once made this observation: “Before the 1700s, the richest members of society had among the shortest lives—meaningfully below that of the overall population.”
It was counterintuitive, but Housel cited a hypothesis, developed by historian T.H. Hollingsworth, to make sense of it: “The best explanation is that the rich were the only ones who could afford all the quack medicines and sham doctors who peddled hope but increased your odds of being poisoned.”
Housel then added this thought: “I would bet good money the same happens today with investing advice.” Wealthy folks,

Generally it’s reported that the more an investor makes changes to their portfolio the worse their returns are. I am guilty of this as I make several changes per year.
Morningstar’s most recent Mind the Gap report for 2024 reports the following:
We estimate that the average dollar invested in US mutual funds and exchange-traded funds earned 6.3% per year over the 10 years ended Dec. 31, 2023. That is approximately 1.1% per year less than the average fund’s total return (of 7.4%) over the same period assuming an initial lump-sum purchase.

BENJAMIN GRAHAM, the father of investment analysis, made this observation: “The investor’s chief problem—even his worst enemy—is likely to be himself.”
Why? One reason is our intuition can sometimes lead us astray. Things that seem like they make sense, and seem like they ought to be true, often turn out not to be supported by the data.
Perhaps the best-known example is the divergence between growth and value stocks. Intuition suggests that growth stocks—companies like Apple and Amazon—would deliver better performance than their more pedestrian peers on the value side of the market.

I was going through some files this morning and happened upon a printout of my portfolio on 4/1/99, probably because this was the first time it totaled 100k.
This is what I held:
These were the Vanguard funds:
20% Healthcare (I was a physical therapist, buy what you know)
22% Growth and Income
19% Growth Index
20% Total Bond
6% Small Cap Index
5% Pacific Stock (I believe the Japan market was hot)
8% Janus Worldwide (it was the hot Janus fund)
 

IT’S AN ARGUMENT I’ll never win. But perhaps I can sow a few seeds of doubt.
The anti-foreign-stock drumbeat has grown louder with each additional year that international markets underperform U.S. shares. Indeed, even though foreign stocks beat U.S. shares in the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s, there are folks today who argue there’s no reason to own foreign shares.
Really? Before you throw in the towel, ask yourself six questions:
1. If U.S.

In late 1981, not long before my 19th birthday, I left Bryanston—my second and final English boarding school—for the last time. I didn’t graduate. Nobody did. At the time, graduation simply wasn’t a thing at English schools, and apparently it still isn’t.
Instead, I’d taken the Cambridge entrance exam, marking the end of my nine years at boarding school. With the exams over, it was time to pack my bags and head back to Washington, DC,

As Jonathon and many others have advocated on this site, avoiding life style creep, and not climbing aboard  the hedonistic treadmill, keeping it simple, etc., are sure fire ways to have a really good chance of achieving financial success. Also, keeping the assets in the correct account types, diversifying and rebalancing are critical , as well as taking the long term view.
It appears to me that Warren Buffett has long been a tremendous example of following that advice.

In January 2020 I invested inherited six figures cash in Vanguard’s Intermediate Term Bond ETF (BIV). The rational was that this money would not be tapped for more than 5 years (just did to replace a dying car with a new Toyota) so during the interim I would expect to gain significantly more return than investing in CDs.
The plan was going great and by 7/2021 I had earned over 13K in returns. Even in 12/2021 I had earned nearly 10K in gains.

NOW THAT I’M RETIRED and have all the time in the world, I often use that time to worry about money. That brings me to a recent offer from Wells Fargo to get a $525 bonus for depositing $25,000 in a savings account for 90 days.
My immediate concern was whether the $525 would more than compensate for the paltry interest rate that Wells Fargo pays. A quick calculation determined that investing $25,000 in a Wells Fargo savings account and getting the $525 bonus—rather than the 4.25% I could then earn with Capital One 360 Performance Savings—would still leave me almost $260 ahead.