Investing

That drift is normal, and it’s the whole reason rebalancing exists. Rebalancing means buying and selling (or redirecting new money) to bring your portfolio back to the mix you originally chose, and you can do it on a set schedule, when your allocation strays past a certain threshold, or a mix of both. It’s not […]

You’ve got the account open. Money’s sitting in it. And now you’re staring at a search bar with thousands of tickers in it, not sure what to actually click “buy” on. That’s the part nobody warns you about. Opening the account is the easy step. Figuring out what goes inside it is where most first-time

That’s the short answer. You fill out an online application, verify your identity, link a bank account, and transfer money in. No broker visits it in person anymore. Here’s what actually goes into each step, and the few places people trip up. If you’re still deciding whether you even need one, what investing actually is

That’s the whole idea behind investing, really: investing is putting your money into an asset, like stocks, bonds, or a fund, with the expectation that it grows in value or pays you income over time. It’s different from saving, which keeps your money safe and easy to reach but growing slowly. Investing trades some of

A reader wrote in a few weeks ago asking what a “benchmark” was. She’d been reading about her 401(k) fund for twenty minutes and kept hitting words that all seemed to mean “good” or “risky” without telling her which. That’s the real problem with investing jargon. It’s not that any single term is hard. It’s

A reader emailed me a few weeks ago with a question that sounds simple until you actually try to answer it: “My advisor keeps saying he’s a fiduciary. Is that just a fancy word for good, or does it actually mean something?” It does mean something. A fiduciary is a person or organization with a

Say two people invest $300 a month. Same fund, same hypothetical 7% average annual return. One starts at 22. The other waits until 32. By 65, the early starter would have roughly $982,000. The one who waited a decade lands closer to $463,000. She only contributed about $36,000 less over her lifetime. Neither number is