The Simple Path to Wealth

There are lit­er­al­ly a mil­lion ways to invest your mon­ey. Indi­vid­ual stocks, mutu­al funds, robo advi­sors.…… try­ing to pick a good way to invest your mon­ey can be com­plete­ly over­whelm­ing. It can feel like it’s just eas­i­er to say skip it and leave your mon­ey in your sav­ings account to grow.

But while leav­ing it your sav­ings account isn’t the absolute worst thing you could do with your mon­ey (like, say, giv­ing it all to your neigh­bor’s creepy uncle to help expand his plumb­ing busi­ness), it’s also not the opti­mal path if you would like your mon­ey to work for you.

The best path, in my opin­ion, is the sim­ple path.

The one where you fig­ure it out once, get it set up to func­tion auto­mat­i­cal­ly, and let it run in the back­ground while you live your life to the fullest.

One of the peo­ple who first turned me onto this way of think­ing is none oth­er than JL Collins, the blog­ger behind jlcollinsnh.com. He runs one of the BEST FI blogs on the inter­net. If you haven’t heard of him or looked through his blog, I high­ly rec­om­mend it if you have some spare time. Each blog has their own thing they’re known for, and his blog is known for his series of arti­cles on investing.

And now.….. he’s turned those arti­cles (and more) into a book!

I had the plea­sure of pre­view­ing this book, and let me tell you, you need this book. I wish I’d had this book when I start­ed fig­ur­ing out how to invest my mon­ey a cou­ple of years ago as it would have saved me more than a few mis­takes. It’s every­thing we should’ve learned about in high school instead of learn­ing about how the mito­chon­dria is the pow­er house of the cell.

Before we get into the meat of this, let me say I’m not get­ting any­thing out of pro­mot­ing his book oth­er than ear­ly access. Not because I get x per­cent­age of sales, or a one time pay­ment. Nope. None of that. I’m pro­mot­ing this book because I gen­uine­ly believe it can help peo­ple get their finan­cial house in order.  I just want to help oth­er peo­ple, and this book is a way to do that.

This book (and the arti­cles it is based on) were orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten as a series of let­ters to his daugh­ter. At the time, like most young adults, she was­n’t inter­est­ed in what dear old dad had to say, so he wrote it down for lat­er in the future when she would be open to lis­ten­ing to his advice. (Not that I know what that’s like.…..)

I met JL at the Chau­tauqua last year and we had sev­er­al great talks con­tain­ing a lot of great advice.  I par­tic­u­lar­ly like lis­ten­ing to him because I’m only a few years old­er than his daugh­ter, so much of the infor­ma­tion he’s try­ing to impart upon her is also use­ful for me. Much of that advice is con­tained in this book, so you don’t even have to cough up the mon­ey for a trip to Ecuador like I did to get it. Since most of you, my won­der­ful read­ers, are just get­ting start­ed in their own jour­neys, you will also find this helpful.

The book con­tains advice and tips on pret­ty much any­thing and every­thing involv­ing invest­ing in the mar­ket, to include but not lim­it­ed to, the following:

-Debt and why it’s impor­tant to avoid it (espe­cial­ly con­sumer debt)
‑FU mon­ey and why it’s great to have
‑how to think about the mar­ket and your money
‑how to invest in the dif­fer­ent kinds of mar­ket environments
‑the var­i­ous stages of wealth (build­ing and preser­va­tion) and how they’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly tied to age
‑the dizzy­ing array of accounts out there and what they do (401ks, Roth IRA, Tra­di­tion­al IRA, HSA, FSA, TSP and others)
‑what invest­ment firms to use and what to avoid
‑some com­mon con tech­niques to avoid
‑the case against Dol­lar Cost Averaging
‑what FI looks like, how to be sup­port­ed by your mon­ey, the 4% rule and how to use it best
‑Social security

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to me was a case study he does with a 26 year old inter­est­ed in FI. There were some excel­lent lessons in there that I liked and thought were super use­ful. Keep in mind, I read this last month so I’m still get­ting use out of this book even though I run my own blog about FI. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know every­thing, which is why I take the time to read what every­one else is writ­ing! I don’t read quite as much as I used to (sad­ly), and the sub­ject mat­ter of the books are much dif­fer­ent now than when I was a kid. Can you imag­ine me at 13 read­ing this book? It would’ve been ridiculous!

Nonethe­less, the younger you are when you get your hands on this book, the bet­ter. Time in the mar­ket is the best thing we Mil­len­ni­als have going for us! So don’t waste any more time and go get it!

Paper Copy

Kin­dle edition