As an extension on my post about mutual funds, I think it is important to talk about a specific type of mutual fund that I do the majority of my investing in: Index Funds. As mentioned, John Bogle created the first low cost index funds and it wasn’t until late with Fidelity has anyone ever competed with Vanguards investor friendly fees. So what are low cost-index funds? So let’s break it down, an index fund is portfolio made to track a specific market index. The most common market indexes being the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and the NASDAQ. All of which we have seen at one time or another in the…
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The Power of the Mutual Fund
In memory of the great Jack Bogle, this seemed like as good of time as any to start talking about mutual funds. As the founder of Vanguard, Jack Bogle, is often credited with being the father of low cost-index funds which is a type of mutual fund. Mr. Bogle passed away this year on January 16th , 2019. So, what is a mutual fund? The best way I view a mutual fund is as a pool of money that is created from contributions from individual investors like you or me. This pool of money is then used to create a portfolio of different stocks and/or bonds managed by the mutual fund company.…
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New Year, New Blog: Goals for 2019
As with any turn of the calendar, it wouldn’t be official without creating some goals first. It’s that time of the year where the gyms all suck to go to and you have to listen to every coworker, family member, and friend talk about their overly ambitious goal in which they will likely give up on in a month. In all seriousness, writing goals is a skill and it is a practice often done by very successful people. The key is writing them down and keeping them SMART. I can hear my physical therapy professors cheering after that comment. SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely The key to…
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The Next Warren Buffett
As I mentioned, I began investing soon after I started my first job as a physical therapist. I had started a Roth IRA with TD Ameritrade for no particular reason other than I had heard of it before. I decided I would start investing $500 dollars per pay check or roughly $1000 per month with the goal to have it maxed out by the end of 2017. Again, I had only just started working in late may, so I felt this was a reasonable goal. At the time of writing this in 2019 the current max on an IRA account is $6,000 per year if you are under 50 and…
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Umm Dad… What’s 401k???
Sometime shortly after I began working in May of 2017, I remember reading through my employer’s benefits packet at my job (I suggest doing this before starting a job, but I was young and dumb). I started seeing abbreviations like 401k, IRA, and HSA, with headlines beneath saying things like “invest in your future”, or “plan for your retirement now”. Embarrassingly, these were all phrases or acronyms that I had seen before but in reality knew nothing about. I remember reading through it and turning to my dad to ask him what a 401k was… I could name you every muscle in the body with it’s origin, insertion, and action.…
