Reddit reviews The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life

I 100% agree with all of the above recommendations for Bogleheads but I'd also recommend The Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins.

It boils down to low cost index funds. Invest there and watch your money grow. Good luck.

I'm gonna echo what u/StrukkStar said. If you think through your assertion carefully the logic doesn't hold up.

I currently have a similar amount of savings as yourself, but by the logic of your post I should take it all out now, right? The fees to sell with my broker are minimal so there's really nothing holding me back. Literally there is no difference between our situations except inertia. So don't I?

Because the market on average is going up, and I can't predict how it will behave. If teams of quants and high paid executives and high performance machine-learning algorithms looking through reams of data can only get it right 50.001% of the time, then my thinking I can speculate better is pure hubris.

So what do you do? Reduce risk with dollar cost averaging? That is invest a portion of it every month to reduce your timing risk? There's three situations that can happen then:

• 1. The market goes goes down, well you shouldn't have invested then. And so what if you did, you're saving for retirement, in a year or two it will have averaged out.
     
• 2. The market stays the same. Then it makes no difference whether you lump-sum it in or drip-feed it.
     
• 3. The market goes up... well... you missed out on those gains man... and the future gains those gains could have earned you, and the future gains the gains of those gains would have earned you, and so on.
     
     And since the market, on average, always goes up, it's just a bad bet to not be investing your cash.
     
     If I was in your situation, I would confidently put it all immediately into exactly the portfolio I have now, because otherwise I should sell the portfolio I have now. If you want to really lower your risk against say a deflationary economy, then you can throw a portion ~10% in bonds. It won't do much harm.
     
     But honestly, for someone in their 30s in the wealth accumulation phase of their life, you have the luxury to wait out any potential recession. The maths says throw it all into a low-cost well-spread full world stock-market ETF, and hold fast, it will be a bit of a wild ride at times but just don't panic, don't do anything rash, and it will be worth it.
     
     As you get older and closer to retirement (wealth maintenance period) then 30% bonds is a good number. But I'd start with 90%-100% in stocks and hold fast. Do your research if you need to be convinced on the numbers for this. Or read The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins (I thought the audiobook was great).
     
     
     Also can I ask you a question: what do you do and what region of the world do you live in? Sounds like the dream.
     
     

I read this book to help with my market expectations.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01H97OQY2/
My conclusion is that Betterment is an investing tool to help me stay on my simple path.

Looking for this one too. For non-aus one, am planning to get this: The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H97OQY2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_CmjyCbV4KKJJS

Generally speaking you'll either want a target date fund (which will have a higher expense ratio, but is "set it and forget it" kind of thing), or dump into something like VTSAX (or whatever equivalent you have access to). You can opt to do other portfolio strategies, but those are the two most commonly used for general suggestions. Many will feel that VTSAX is investing in only one stock, which is inaccurate as VTSAX invests in the broad market.

Also, if you have some time go and read through JLCollin's stock series (note - it's currently down for some reason, looks like their web host is having issues). Or read the simple path to wealth.

TL:DR - if you want 100% stocks, throw it in VTSAX and forget about it. Over the past 10 years VTSAX has returned 12%, with the worst 3 year period being -8% and best 3 years being 33%.

I apologize if you had indicated your gender and I missed it. Otherwise I am old school (got this from my 60 year old female freshman English teacher way back in the day) and unknown genders use the masculine form.

As far as reading materials:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01H97OQY2/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1479088087&sr=8-1

I haven't read this book. I've read everything on his blog, and it's my understanding that the book is a reorganization of the key parts of the blog. I wanted to read the book before recommending but it's been checked out of my library since they got it (and the author is so serious about financial independence that his recommendation was to get it from the library instead of buying!). It is available on the kindle.

Most of the info in the book is probably included for free in this series of blog posts.

http://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/

the simple path to wealth by JL Collins

I suggest reading some personal finance blogs before getting books. information in bite size pieces, so you won’t feel overwhelmed, you can get a general consensus from many bloggers, and you will realize that investing and planning for retirement isn’t super complicated.

And podcasts! I am really into Suze orman’s new podcast “women and money”