I just finished reading a book called Just Keep Buying by Nick Maggiulli. It’s an easy read that gives you advice on how to invest to build wealth over time. I probably should have spent more time reading these sorts of books in my early twenties, because time is one of the most important factors in wealth building. I would recommend the book to others.
Inadvertently, I have probably been following most of the advice in this book, which is mostly to buy ETF-like stocks whenever you have the money, and just keep doing that. The last chapter has a good summary of everything else in the book if you want to skip around. I’ll try to summarize some high level takeaways in bullet form (minus lifestyle advice):
- As you make more money, growing income is more effective than decreasing spending.
- Buy a home when the time is right (I personally made the mistake of buying a condo when I was younger and paying it off too quickly–I would have made more money investing in the stock market).
- When saving money, cash is a better option if you are saving less than ~3 years.
- Put your money in income-producing assets (i.e. not rocks or crypto).
- Don’t by individual stocks (you don’t have enough time to know if your better than the market until it’s too late). The stress isn’t worth it.
- Buy quickly, sell slowly. That is to say, generally, the longer you’re in the market, the better.
- Don’t time the market or fear volatility
- Market crashes are usually buying opportunities (although if you follow the other advice I don’t think you’d have a bunch of cash sitting around to buy during a crash).
- 401k fees might make it so that it’s not worth maxing your 401k, but always do it up to employer match.
- There is no golden rule on reallocating assets to align with your percentage goals, but he does it once a year and would prefer only buying rather than selling to hit the desired ratios.
- You’ll never feel rich (I said I wouldn’t put lifestyle ones, but he gave an interesting but sad story of a rich guy winning the lottery).