You are not a day-trader.
You don’t have an “edge,” you aren’t Jordan fucking Belfort, and you definitely don’t know your ass from your elbow when it comes to predicting the markets.
I know, I know...
You watched two YouTube videos, downloaded Robinhood, and now you're checking charts on the toilet like you're one trade away from a yacht.
You're not.
You're a guy named Kyle with $400 and a dream.
And look, I get the appeal.
Picking stocks feels like investing. It's exciting. There are candles and graphs and little green arrows everywhere.
Plus, your buddy swears his crypto coin is about to go to the moon.
(Not that you really know what that means.)
Meanwhile, the actual professionals, people with finance degrees, Bloomberg terminals, and teams of analysts who do this 80 hours a week, can't reliably beat the market.
Fun fact: the majority of professional fund managers underperform a boring index fund over the long run.
And those people trade for a LIVING.
So you think you're going to out-trade them between meetings because you "have a good feeling" about a stock?
Buddy.
That's not investing.
That's gambling with extra steps.
You're not Warren Buffett.
You're not even Jimmy Buffett.
And at least Jimmy diversified into cheeseburgers and margarita machines.
(Another fun fact: even actual Warren Buffett says most people should just buy index funds. The greatest stock picker alive is telling you not to pick stocks. Take the hint.)
So what should you do instead?
Be boring.
Gloriously, profitably, and aggressively boring.
Here's the boring plan that actually builds wealth:
1. Buy the haystack.
Instead of hunting for the needle (the next Amazon), just buy the whole haystack.
(That's an index fund.)
An index fund is one investment that holds hundreds of companies at once.
A total market or S&P 500 index fund means you own a tiny slice of the biggest companies in America.
One company tanks? You barely feel it.
When the market grows over decades, like it historically has? You grow with it.
The best part?
You don’t have to do jack shit.
In Partnership with Money Lion
You know what you shouldn't do?
Invest if you still have tons of debt.
But I get how hard it is to pay off everything if you've got 23 different cards open with a billion points of interest...
(I exaggerate, but you get it.)
Which is why, if you're drowning in an ocean of debt, it could be worth looking into a personal loan.
Money Lion makes it easy, and could possibly help you consolidate your debt and lower your monthly payments.
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Seriously.
Don't worry about returns until you take care of that 20%+ APR.
2. Use the accounts with the cheat codes.
Before you touch a regular brokerage account, max out the tax-advantaged stuff:
- Your 401(k), at least up to the employer match. That’s FREE MONEY. Turning it down is like volunteering for a pay cut.
- A Roth IRA, where your money grows and comes out tax-free in retirement. These accounts are the government literally handing you a discount for being responsible.
- An HSA if you wanna get fancy with tax-free money. You can spend this money on certain pre-approved things you were gonna do anyway.
3. Automate it and walk away.
Set up an automatic transfer every payday.
$50, $100, whatever you can actually sustain.
This is called dollar-cost averaging, and it means you never have to "time the market."
Market's up?
You're buying.
Market's down?
You're buying on sale.
You know who beats almost everybody in investing?
People who forgot they had an account.
No panic selling, or “inspired” trades. Just time.
4. Stop checking it.
The stock market's job is to go up and down and give cable news something to scream about.
Your job is to ignore it.
If a red day makes you want to sell everything, you're not investing, you're signing up for an anxiety subscription.
Check it quarterly.
Maybe.
This is a crockpot, not a slot machine.
Set it, forget it, and let the decades do the heavy lifting.
5. Keep your "casino money" tiny.
Fine.
FINE!
If you absolutely must scratch the itch, if you'll simply die without owning some individual stock or coin, cap it at 5% of your investing money.
That's your casino budget.
When it goes to zero, and it might, your future is still safe in the boring 95%.
But your retirement? Your actual wealth?
That rides in the index funds.
And one more thing, because I know someone's thinking it:
"But Caleb, index funds only make like 8-10% a year. That's SLOW."
Yeah? $300 a month at that rate for 30 years is roughly a million dollars.
So fuck you Charlie! I don’t care if you’re special. You whining irks me.
Slow is how wealth actually gets built.
Fast is how you lose your retirement on meme-coins.
Good investing is boring.
Always has been.
There's no adrenaline or “diamond hands,” it's just automatic transfers into diversified funds for 30 years while compound interest works mathematically wizardry.
The bros chasing 10x returns mostly end up back at zero.
The boring index fund people end up millionaires.
Be boring, Pookie.
Taquitos,
Caleb "Boring and Rich" Hammer
P.S. Don't forget, for Christmas in July, every single Master Your Money course is 50% OFF through July 22nd.
Budgeting. Debt. Investing. Real Estate.
All half-price.
Get it while the gettin's good.
Sale ends July 22.
