How did you decide on your investment strategy?

[Closet_Gamer]

I am a committed index investor with a fixed AA, written investment policy statement, mechanical re-balancing approach and a structured review schedule. I occassionly sin behind the church with a little speculation, but that is just for fun.

I was not born this way.

I forget who said it, she was a powerful wealthy woman, but the gist was "You cannot manage a large income until you've successfully managed a small one."

Amen. For me it helped to start dead broke.

DW and I got married right out of college with a huge pile of student debt. This was the mid-90s and the loans were mostly 8-10% rates. At one point we were "saving" nearly 50% of our income making the minimum loan payments. We snowballed down the debt to zero over about 5 years.

Ultimately it gave us a huge advantage ... we were living WAY below our means and never looked back on that point. I also read the Millionaire Next Door and the Wealthy Barber.

When I started investing, I quickly became suspicious of my new ML advisor saying "lots of my clients are buying xyz" and I realized that commissions & loads meant it was likely to be along time just to break even. I dumped them and moved to Schwab.

Then two things happened simultaneiously ... I decided my stash had grown big enough that I could screw it up. So I hired a financial manager (thru Schwab) and paid him to REALLY screw it up. Lesson learned. I started to read everything I could get my hands on.

I also went to work at a start-up private equity firm (that would go on to fail). My co-worker really understood finance. He taught me about risk, relative rates of return, financing stuctures of companies ... it was awesome. I also got close enough to a couple of deals to learn that it is not possible for a small investor to really know what is going on inside of a large company's finances. I walked out of one transaction and committed myself to being an index investor.

Lastly - and this is not a path open to everyone - I learned about my company's very generious Non-Qualified Deferred Compensation Plan for execs and made it my mission to gain entry. Clouds parted. Angels sang. The Dove of Peace came down to rest on my investment plan.

So, mostly I learned by getting myself into trouble and then getting out of it.

 

[SJhawkins]

Kinda of did whatever in my 20s, just tossed some dollars into my 401k.

Read Bogleheads Guide to Investing and Rick's book All About Asset Allocations in my 30's and been in the Bogle camp ever since.

I do think one of the most important things is to actually write an Investment Policy Statement, many people seem to want to skip that part. Mine is maybe 1/2 page and been updated 2 or 3 times in 20 years. I don't think much about whatever noise I hear, got better things to do.

The flip side, did not realize I grew up somewhat poor as everyone around us was mostly on the same footing. Somehow my folks were happy and had a full life with very little. My last parent who is mid 90s can't spend the SS check but is still happy and enjoys life. This too has but a lot into perspective and makes it easier to tune out the market noise and just enjoy what we have (trying to figure this enjoy part out yet!)

 

[kcowan]

I got serious when one of the investors in my company was in a local brokerage. He had spent time learning about me and my Board before he invested. Pretty soon, I was following his advice (unassuming engineer by training).

He would invite me to sessions with CEOs who were presenting. For every ten companies he invested in, I would pick three of the ones I thought were best. Then I got into a discount brokerage and started research on my own. Using the same principles he used.

I branched out into broad spectrum mutual funds and developed an Investment Policy Statement. Had good success with convertible preferred shares.

Upon retiring, I modified the IPS, and consulted my heirs about my aggressive equity bent. They agreed that I should continue what was working.

Gradually I have invested in my winners and pruned my losers. As a result, total net worth grew by 13.5% in the 1st half. A chunk of our money is with a wealth advisor so that DW can use them when I move on!(7%). They make about 3% less than I do partly due to fees.

A lot of what I learned has been summarized <a href="https://www.finiki.org/">here</a>.

 

[OldShooter]

... So, mostly I learned by getting myself into trouble and then getting out of it.

Me, too. I wasted 30 years doing dumb stuff before I figured out how easy this is. I made money during those years, but not what I would have made through simple indexing. OP, you can jump the line by studying the advice you are getting here. Good luck!

 

[swakyaby]

@Closet_Gamer
Loved your story.

 

[38Chevy454]

My path was fairly predictable. Being a self supporting college student and graduating with engineer degree, I knew what it takes to see a long term goal and make it through. Plus as an engineer I understand the math, especially the power of compounding. It helped that I worked for large companies that had 401k/403b type programs. I knew it was good to save and start on that path, so always used the pay yourself first method. Combine that with some LBYM and trying to avoid bad debt. I don't think mortgage is a bad thing, it got me on the housing ownership wave and I have ridden it since I was 25. Dabbled a bit with a 4-plex rental property; it was good for tax purposes and money, but it was also like an extra part-time job. So I got out of that even though it had positive financial benefit.

My corporate 401k/403b were always invested in 100% stocks when working. I am a believer in stocks performance in the long term. Which has been a good run since I started the salary savings nearly 35 years ago. About 3 years from retirement i went to a 80/20 AA, which suits me now, although I have lowered my AA target to 70/30 even if Mr Market has that out of whack currently with more equities. I have a small pension that I consider sort of like fixed income so I run higher equities than some people. It works for me.

For the past 15 years I have a small home based business related to my old car hobby that provides mostly tax benefits. Had next to nothing to do with being able to retire. It does provide me a little (emphasis on little) cash for my car hobby activities. Understanding tax laws and where they can benefit you is an important skill to learn as part of the overall financial knowledge. The rental property and the business both have advantageous tax results.

So back to the original question, how did I decide on investment strategy? Mainly knowing that I needed to start early and keep invested in the market over the long term.

 

[racy]

Like others I grew up with financially illiterate parents. We lived on a small farm. I wanted more. Money has always interested me.

In college in the mid '70s pursuing a business degree, I learned about the 'magic of compound interest': small amounts invested regularly over a long period was the key. I knew then I wanted to get a job immediately after my BS degree and start investing.

I was fortunate to get a mgmt job in a company with a 401k and began investing.

The other key was marrying someone who had a similar background, who also had a career and invested in her 401k. We agreed on paying ourselves first and not carrying any credit card debt.

As far as a strategy, that evolved over time. Early on it was Money magazine (RIP) and personal finance books. Also, learned a lot here and at bogleheads.org

 

[Badger]

Once out of grad school, married, and a small school loan my father told me to pay myself first even if it was only $20/month. On a combined income in 1973 of $12k and living in a "fix er upper" we struggled to pay the mortgage and repair the house so nothing went into savings other than an emergency fund. A few years later we sold the house to buy another "fix er upper" in need of repairs so the struggle continued until the divorce came a year later. Then money got really tight.
Married 5 years later to someone who worked with me to get started on a retirement plan. I didn't know where to start or how to invest so off to the library to read Kiplingers and Money magazine along with investment newsletters. Made a few mistakes along the way until I finally settled on target retirement funds and later moved to Wellsley and Wellington IRAs. Strategy was to pay off the house and cars and never borrow again except for a credit card that is paid off every month then save/invest half of our income until retirement. When I found this website in 2008 I started from the beginning and read all the posts to find out who I trusted for the best advice. Eventually I also made a few stock buys through Scottrade (now Schwab). Now we are retired. The IRAs and stocks along with recent CDs and cash is where it sits now.
Looks like my grown stepchildren will be looking at a nice inheritance.

Cheers!

 

[scrabbler1]

My mom picked up some investment tips back in the 1970s and 1980s listening to a radio show called, "What's Your Problem?" hosted by Dr. Bernard Meltzer here in NY on WOR. He offered advice on anything and everything, not limited to financial things. She began dabbling in tax-free bond mutual funds and passed that advice to me in 1990 when I finally had enough extra money to invest after recovering from buying my current co-op apartment. [Another good piece of advice passed along to me from Dr. Meltzer via my mom: Buy the worst apartment in the best building.]

I soon branched out into other mutual funds including mixed-asset and stock mutual funds just in time for the late 1990s boom.

I was already LBYM and saving a lot and investing a lot, both in my company's 401k and outside it. I hated debt, having paid off my student loans 2 years after graduating and paying cash for my car (and always paid my CC in full). Interest rates were much higher back in the 1980s and deducting personal interest on your income taxes got phased out with the 1986 tax reform act. I paid off the mortgage in 9 years.

My mom passed away in 1995, so she never got to see the big result of her carefully planted seeds of advice.

I settled on a comfortable 55/45 AA in my 401k once I began investing more in stocks in the 1990s. I didn't have as strict an AA in the taxable side.

I picked up bits of advice over the years, but nothing huge like what I learned in my more formative years of the 1980s and early 1990s.

 

[Yoheadden]

Thank you so much for everyone sharing their stories. So many great pieces of information, advice & quotes. It’s interesting to see so many common threads among the posts and the stories. As always, this community is so generous and helpful.

 

[gayl]

Late add:
I decided I wasn't as smart as I thought so gradually went 85% SCHB (total stock market etf) & 15% CDs (currently average 5.3%)

 

[ArmchairMillionaire23]

There are practically as many ways to save and invest as there are people in this forum. Whether you send in regular amounts (dollar cost average) or day trade, how did you come across your strategy and how do you block out all the noise(news) that tells us we need more of this or sell that to keep our portfolios staying in the black?
With so much information available, I.E. emails, investment letters, forums, etc, how did you decide what route to take and keep on track ?
I’m not talking about the next hot thing (bit coin), but what I consider an overload of information.

Thank you for sharing your strategies, thoughts and ideas…

I read "The Armchair Millionaire" by Douglas Gerlach and Lewis Schiff back in 2000 or so. (Hence my username) Before that I was like you. Just kept my bills paid and saved what I could. Then my employer merged with a Megacorp and my 401(k) got rolled into a Vanguard account. That was around the time I read both "The Millionaire Next Door" and "The Armchair Millionaire" Most of us here have read TMND. I liked it, and it got me thinking about not just saving for my future but also investing for my retirement. It got me motivated. Then I read TAM. It had a complete how-to plan (index funds) and showed how a "schmuck in pajamas" (words from the book) could retire as a millionaire if they followed their simple plan using investment firms such as Vanguard.

So I followed their plan for almost 20 years. It was somewhat risky (100% stock index funds split among 3 indexes) but I was in my early 20s and figured I had time on my side. Then I modified it a little by adding some bond funds as I'm getting closer to my (hopefully) planned retirement date.

I just stay the course for the most part. I adjust twice a year to keep my preferred asset allocation or if there is enough market shifting to make my allocation vary by 5% or more. (like in March of 2020, for example)

I also put some of my cash from my savings & checking accounts into a CD this past February since the rates were up around 5%.

There's been ups and downs but for the most part I'm happy I read those two books!

 

[tenant13]

When I opened my first IRA 30 years ago I just purchased some really crappy mutual funds as suggested by the "advisor" - they've lost 50% of their value in a year or two and I never wanted to hear the word "fund" again - mutual, index or otherwise. Then I read something about never investing in anything you don't understand and only buying shares in companies that sell products I personally know and like. Basically treating investing as if wanted to financially support something I believed in. So I did just that and in the process I bought Apple, Tesla, Amazon, Netflix... also, Coinbase lol. This wasn't stock "picking" - I just really enjoyed what these companies were doing so I gave them my money. I always hated Facebook so I stayed away from that. I don't understand bonds - and just dislike trading debt in general - so that was out too. I play with options and with digital assets for fun.

I eventually got some broad market index funds (eh, ok but boring...), tried another human advisor (never again) and a robo advisor (my own portfolio is at all time high, robo: 15% down). I don't think what I do is a strategy but who cares, it's enjoyable

 

[BlueberryPie]

After graduation and marriage, my focus was on buying a house and building the down payment in my savings account (not as terrible as it sounds, we didn't put that much down in our first house, so it only took a couple of years and inflation wasn't that bad).
Just after buying the house, we started thinking about investing beyond putting some money in my 401(k), back then retirement seemed so far away that we were more looking at general wealth building than retirement per see. Served us well when buying our next home, where we moved to a higher COL state but used some of those investments to complement the $ from the sale of the first house and put 20% down to avoid PMI

Anyway, my local college offered a 3-night seminar on "investments for beginners", and while it was a bit of a sales job for their advisors, they managed to beat into us the fact that investing is different from saving, the power of compounding, the power of DCA vs market-timing and the fact that investing is something you do for the long term so you worry about ups and downs of the market.

Armed with those pearls of wisdom, I started investing in an SP500 index fund in taxable, automatic paycheck withdrawal, and putting 10-15% of my salary into a TDF fund in my 401(k), and more or less ignored it for 15-20 years. I had no idea about what happened to the market in 2008 or 2011 until years later, because I basically didn't look/care.

That was a great foundation but I wish I had taken a little more interest, understood that the need to retire is real and invested a little more, and had understood that 0.5% ER is not great (it actually probably was when I started) but honestly, those are just imperfection in a good plan.

The other interesting thing is something that came naturally to my wife and I: Live Below your Means. we never were even tempted to not pay a credit card in full, I was horrified at how much house we were prequalified by the lender on our first house and disagreed that I could afford that big of a monthly payment.
The corollary is don't try to keep up with the Joneses. We had a DINK couple of friends that never had 2 pennies to run together when we were always satisfied with our standing of living with only half the income. We never felt the feel for the flashy car, the expensive vacations, the brand name clothes. I credit both our parents for raising us that way, even if it was out of necessity from being raised in a household that had "just enough".

I am so thankful we never hired an advisor. By the time we had sufficient net worth to think about it, we were savvy enough to realize that 1.5% AUM was a hefty tax, and we had a natural distrust of the smooth salesmen. I was also "lucky" to have a friend that thought he was smarter than the market and ended up losing a couple hundred grand he could not afford to lose, as a deterrent for "playing the market". Gravitating toward set-and-forget index-based investments was a natural fit for us, and once I read Jack Bogle and found the bogleheads forum, I knew I had found my tribe.

As retirement approaches, I have taken a more active role in educating myself, optimizing our already good investments (consolidated accounts/funds, found lower costs index ETFs, go a better understanding of my AA and international exposure, started practicing tax location, I now know what RMDs and Roth conversions mean, etc...), but all the foundations were there between being raised to live within or below my means and investing early and steady.

 

[HaveEnough]

I love the Warren Buffet advice, invest in what you know.

Over the years, this silly person tried some options, picking, income, high yield. Until, perhaps, fate intervened. As a teen, the parents had rental properties, guess who helped fix them ... Rentals changed their lives.

Once my mind had the time to "cook" my parents methods, there was understanding, more research and comfort from my younger days.

Real Estate is my "know", so that is what the majority of the money is invested in.

 

[MRG]

When I started at Megacorp, they had a profit sharing plan. No contributions required they put about 10% of your salary into it. No investment choices either. The fund was 100% equities, and the fund manager allowed Megacorp to substitute some portion of the fund elsewhere. Worked well as the CEO was a good investor.

Megacorp's clients were in financial services, and we always heard plenty of stuff. You learned a lot from the right people, like costs matter. Later, Megacorp got a 401k. You could still get a 10% contribution by leveraging the legacy profit sharing and the match on the new 401k. By then, I had seen the value of investing.

 

[RobLJ]

I think I read Random Walk and another book on investing electronically in the early 90's, so I pretty much divided up DW and my 401k and 403b investments into quadrants with a % allocation and rebalanced in February. This was until 2005 when I got the heeby-jeebies with the real estate boom (reminded me of the Savings and Loan crisis in the Southwest in the 80's, so I diversified and moved from 90%+ stocks to a 70/30 allocation and moved a bunch of the gains in large growth to midcap value.) It looked stupid for 2 years as large cap growth continued to go up, and then not so stupid in late 2007-8-9 when large cap growth crashed bigtime. I had hit 50 so that was another factor in diversifying from the S&P.
Since 2018 or 2019 I've gotten lazy; I already started combining DW's large number of rollovers but I need to take a gimlet eye at the allocations the last 2-3 years.
Edit: Quicken Allocation tells me I'm right at 61% stocks, but it doesn't do a fine grained analysis inside the US and Foreign Stock grids. I down load the Quicken data to Excel, add the sector description, then do a PivotTable analysis. It takes a few hours, mostly to add the sector descriptions. Then I have to decide which to sell and which to buy; we have too many accounts and too many fund holdings. Simplify, simplify! At least I've cut the number of accounts in half over the last 3 years.

 

[HI Bill]

In my first two w#rking years (1991-92), I didn't invest or save, because I thought I'd pass before retirement age. I switched jobs, and my new employer used Vanguard, and paid annual bonuses into our 401(k)s. He taught me the value of low-cost investing, and I didn't know anything about AA.

My third employer had an ESOP (which I didn't know about when I was hired). This was the easiest $ I've ever accrued. I spent almost 2 decades with that company, and after an IPO, my $0 investment has grown to almost $1MM.

I had conservative investments that weren't balanced (Wellington, Windsor), and they didn't keep up with the markets on the whole. After years of stagnation, I moved to VTI, VOO, VUG, VEA and BND. I know there's overlap there, but it's worked reasonably well for me, and my gains are now exceeding my spending in ER, at least for now. If only I'd read something on AA earlier, and knew about the Callan Periodic Chart of Investment returns and the Bogleheads 3-fund portfolio!

 

[GaryInCO]

I have to add a contrary cautionary tale to all these heartwarming success stories ...

I started at Megacorp in 1979. In a year I qualified for the stock-purchase plan and I signed right up. However the idea of "buy and hold" scared the bejeezus out of me. For my entire life (since I was about 8), the market had gone sideways. Up and down, and each down vaporized lots of value. The only way to get ahead was to sell high and buy low. And we know how well that generally works.

So I started buying company stock in 1980, and the market started going up and up. Which made me very nervous, because of COURSE it was going to crash just like it had my whole life. Finally in 1986 I couldn't take it any longer, and I sold. Sure enough, about 10 months later we had the giant crash of 1987. Megacorp stock plummeted all the way down to... 10% higher than where I had sold. Then it turned around and headed for the moon. Without me.

How many people do you know who **LOST** money in the 1983-2000 bull? You know at least one. I rolled my proceeds from selling Megacorp into questionable investments (like upgrading my house, which I thought was a good investment!), and at the end of it I had a paid-off used car and not much more. There was no way I would jump back into the market -- look how high it is!! Good God it's building up to a titanic crash. And I kept saying that while the market went up about 8x. Without me. Finally I said "OK obviously I was wrong. I'd better get back in the market" -- you guessed it, in late 1999.

I have a depressing list of sob stories like that, but suffice it to say that everything I touched imploded. I picked stocks... they tanked. I said "OK I can't pick stocks, I'll hire someone with a good record" ... and suddenly their 5-10 year success record turned into a 50% loss. Again and again and again. I quit putting money into my IRA because I was sick of watching it go up in smoke. It's now worth less than it was when I left Megacorp in 1991.

And then half of our net worth walked out the door when DW decided to take a hike. Biggest loss of all, sadly.

I would be much richer if I had just buried my money in a jar in the back yard. Honestly I really don't quite know how I ended up with a 7-figure net worth, but I'm not complaining. (Real estate was a lot of it. A third of it is equity in my house, so it doesn't do me much good but my sons will enjoy it.)

I would like to tell my sons not to do what I did, to open their IRAs and 401ks and buy index funds or whatever. But I'm afraid my advice would be as poisoned as my personal experience. I hate to put the kiss-of-death on 'em. Let this be a lesson to you, boys. Don't do what he did.

 

[Koolau]

I have to add a contrary cautionary tale to all these heartwarming success stories ...

I started at Megacorp in 1979. In a year I qualified for the stock-purchase plan and I signed right up. However the idea of "buy and hold" scared the bejeezus out of me. For my entire life (since I was about 8), the market had gone sideways. Up and down, and each down vaporized lots of value. The only way to get ahead was to sell high and buy low. And we know how well that generally works.

So I started buying company stock in 1980, and the market started going up and up. Which made me very nervous, because of COURSE it was going to crash just like it had my whole life. Finally in 1986 I couldn't take it any longer, and I sold. Sure enough, about 10 months later we had the giant crash of 1987. Megacorp stock plummeted all the way down to... 10% higher than where I had sold. Then it turned around and headed for the moon. Without me.

How many people do you know who **LOST** money in the 1983-2000 bull? You know at least one. I rolled my proceeds from selling Megacorp into questionable investments (like upgrading my house, which I thought was a good investment!), and at the end of it I had a paid-off used car and not much more. There was no way I would jump back into the market -- look how high it is!! Good God it's building up to a titanic crash. And I kept saying that while the market went up about 8x. Without me. Finally I said "OK obviously I was wrong. I'd better get back in the market" -- you guessed it, in late 1999.

I have a depressing list of sob stories like that, but suffice it to say that everything I touched imploded. I picked stocks... they tanked. I said "OK I can't pick stocks, I'll hire someone with a good record" ... and suddenly their 5-10 year success record turned into a 50% loss. Again and again and again. I quit putting money into my IRA because I was sick of watching it go up in smoke. It's now worth less than it was when I left Megacorp in 1991.

And then half of our net worth walked out the door when DW decided to take a hike. Biggest loss of all, sadly.

I would be much richer if I had just buried my money in a jar in the back yard. Honestly I really don't quite know how I ended up with a 7-figure net worth, but I'm not complaining. (Real estate was a lot of it. A third of it is equity in my house, so it doesn't do me much good but my sons will enjoy it.)

I would like to tell my sons not to do what I did, to open their IRAs and 401ks and buy index funds or whatever. But I'm afraid my advice would be as poisoned as my personal experience. I hate to put the kiss-of-death on 'em. Let this be a lesson to you, boys. Don't do what he did.

Sounds familiar - minus the divorce - but with some really bad investments on the side (Me and Willy Nelson!)

 

[steady saver]

I love your question.

My dad taught me how to read the stock pages in the paper when I was in 3rd grade. He always invested fairly conservatively. I was a saver growing up and I simply never spent much money. I had a savings account and that was it. I never invested.

Fast forward to about age 28. Both DH and I were through with school. He worked for a megacorp with a 401K and we put in all we were allowed. I started learning about investing, opened an account with "Wall Street Equities" and I had to actually call in my orders to a very fast speaking guy on the other end (it was ALWAYS a guy). I read all the basics, plus the Beardstown Ladies...does anyone remember that one? It was the 90's and hard to make too many bad calls. I started a women's investment group and used Value Line (those really piled up!).
We never considered bonuses or gift money as spending money. It always went into investments or paying off our mortgage.

I also remember in around 1991, reading Your Money or Your Life. That fired both DH and I up and while we weren't zealots, it did make us look at money in a whole new way.

When my sons were growing up, we taught them money skills...(that could be another post...). I taught my older son how to invest and he started investing in high school. When it was time to go to college, he decided (on his own) to sell his individual stocks and buy index funds. I admit I was a little disappointed at the time but since then I have so admired his wisdom. He had told me "mom, I'm going to be busy. I won't have time to follow the stock market. This makes more sense." And he was right! My younger son just went straight to index funds. He had no interested in investing and it was actually his older brother that initially helped him set up an account.

I am pleased with the way we handled many things. I'm glad we lived below our means. I'm glad we paid off our mortgage(s) early. I'm glad we invested. I'm glad we maxed out our 401Ks.

The only regret I have, is that we became so good at saving and investing money, that we didn't really know how to spend it well. Does that make sense? Now we have entered this new era of having money to spend and it is quite frankly hard to get my head around the fact that we have it to spend. No we aren't tightwads but we simply have weak muscles when it comes to spending money on things and experiences that aren't, quite frankly, real estate related. We have a home and a farm and it's easy for us to pay for things that need to be done, but I'm finding that's just not fun. And I'm wanting to do more fun things, have more fun experiences. Again, that is another post.

The best advice I can give is, start early, invest in index funds and forget them, consider real estate, and live below your means but by all means include "fun" money in your planning and use it! Don't save it all up for when you're older.

 

[Jeffman52]

Sheer dumb luck and perseverance. When DW and I married in 2008 (we were in our mid 40's) we both carried very little savings, had very little saved for retirement (about 50K between us), and we both had a number of credit cards and of course both of us had car payments.


The good thing is that we both had decent jobs and knew we had to start shoveling soon or we would never have a retirement. We did the Dave Ramsey debt snowball and got out of debt and decreasing our spend. Then we started the process of increasing our savings into 401K's each year until eventually we were putting about 20% each into it. By the time I learned about Roth's we were both making too much to be able to take advantage and too little to load up our 401k's to do backdoor Roths. But time, some good increases in pay, and a good run of bull markets will do wonders for your financial position. Fast forward to now and we have a paid off home worth 450K and 1.7M in retirement savings. Next May is our freedom day from Corporate America and assuming some gains we will be at about 1.8M or so. Way more than we need to last our lifetimes and enough in liquid savings with no exposure to last out a few years of bad market returns.



As far as investments. We just picked some good solid mutual funds from Fidelity (Contrafund was the best for us even though we had a few other funds) and just sat tight, adding to it, and watched it grow.

 

[Librarian]

We are still in the "figuring it out" stage

DH & I were both teacher librarians...so we have the blessing of a healthy pension, but the disadvantage of not a lot of extra otherwise for saving/investing with 3 children.

We did have the advantage of grandparents who created 529s for our children so they/we did not have to pay for higher education. 2/3 children even have a chunk of that 529 left...and one managed a Master's with his.

We inherited a nice chunk 18 mos. ago. (our children did each get a decent amount--with wise investment choices, time will be on their side).

Needless to say we let that money sit 6 mos...DM was in end stages cancer, DF with health issues & needed to move fairly soon after her passing, all the while I was finishing my last year of teaching. That money was the LEAST of my concerns. We did put it in a HYS at our local bank (NOT an impressive %--checking is higher) & bought some investment books...but no time, energy or brain space to even worry about it.

SLOWLY we have been moving things around since then.
Did buy Treasury Bonds this year & last.
Did move a nice chunk to BREAD online HYS (gosh, I LOVE that monthly interest amount!)
Did get a 16 mo. CD at our local bank.
Did open an Etrade account--1st bought a couple cruiseline stocks to get advantages when cruising...then slowly buying stocks here & there after vast research (librarian in me). In the positive (and the $1500 on board credit we have/will receive on our cruise stocks adds to that!)

Doing nothing, or little, for a while as your comfort level IS OK.
Like anything...do a little first.
Then as your comfort level increases try another.
It has worked well for us.

Could we be making more? Sure.
But we are balancing our novice status with our comfort level & we are good with that for now.

 

[Foghorn Leghorn]

I wandered around semi aimlessly for years and threw 401k dollars at the sexy fund du jour. One day I read the quote that says " the markets go up. The markets go down. Over the long haul the markets go up" When I fully bought into that I went with a lazy 3 fund strategy and I will ride that scheme until my demise.

 

[CyclingInvestor]

64, retired 16 years, living off stock dividends. I got here mainly by being cheap and lazy

I was always a compulsive saver, so that part was easy. When I entered the world of 401ks, the sp500 index fund had much lower expenses than any of the other stock funds, so it all went there. With each new job (4 in 27 years), I rolled the 401k into an IRA, where it all went into stocks. By 2006 the dividend flow was enough to live in. I was too lazy to look at what the "experts" said.