I wish I had known and started when I was 18.
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We all want to feel financially secure in our older years. As our bodies age and become less capable of working, our income from paid labor will decrease and we will become more reliant on other sources of income.
I wish I had know what I am about to share when I was eighteen.
Everyone wants to know how to make money more easily and passively. People dabble in cryptocurrency, forex, penny stocks, day trading and other things. Technology has made trading and investing more accessible than ever before.
In our culture, it feels as though we have set up wealth as the cardinal pursuit of life. The economy seems to be the central focus of every government. Whilst money and the economy are important, they are not the purpose of life, nor will they bring the kind of happiness, accomplishment, or fulfillment we all seek after.
So let me share something I have learned through listening to, and reading what Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest men in the world and greatest investors of all time, has to say on investing.
“In my view, for most people, the best thing to do is to own the S&P 500 index fund. People will try and sell you other things because there's more money in it for them if they do.”
Could it be more simple than this?
Consider this, if an 18-year old set up an automatic investment for just $155 each month, roughly $5 per day, and did this until they were 65, based on the historic performance of the S&P 500 index, they would retire a millionaire. This number obviously increases if you invested more.
Now if we’ve delayed seriously investing until we are, let’s say 33. There’s still hope. Of course you miss out on many years of compounding, but it is still better to start investing today than not at all.
But let us not be roped in by gurus on the internet who try to offer us get rich quick solutions or complex and complicated ones. Building wealth really can be as simple as consistently investing in S&P 500 index funds.
So this is what I have been doing. I have a Roth IRA with Vanguard and my investing strategy is very simple; I invest in S&P 500 Exchange Traded Funds.
Nothing glamorous. But I am following the advice of the incredibly successful Warren Buffet, not some self-proclaimed cryptocurrency guru who claims to know how to become a millionaire this year. Dave Ramsey also advocates a very similar and simple approach to investing and planning for the latter years of our lives.
I don’t write about money often, because there are far more important things to write and think about. That’s why I have written this today.
If we spend so much of our time and energy thinking about and worrying about money, retirement, investing, and our financial future, we have no time to consider the more weightier matters of life.
Adopting a simple, and proven investment strategy frees us to pursue after the more noble and important things in life; relationships, faith, wellness.
I hope I haven’t sounded like another Guru today! I just wanted to share something that I have learned and is helping to free my mind from worrying about my financial future.
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