When a large sum of money lands in your lap, you face a choice: invest it all at once (lump sum), or spread it into the market over time (dollar-cost averaging, or DCA). If I received a true windfall, I would invest it as a lump sum.
Tag Archives: Investing
Time Beats Amount: Why Starting Early Matters More Than Investing More
If you could control only one variable in your investing life, which would matter more: how much you invest, or how long you invest? Most people instinctively say amount. The math says otherwise. And the good news is that it means you do not need a high income or a big lump sum to buildContinue reading “Time Beats Amount: Why Starting Early Matters More Than Investing More”
My Investment Policy Statement
An investment policy statement is a short written plan that defines how you will invest and, just as importantly, how you will behave when markets get frightening or exciting. Writing one down in advance is valuable because it turns your strategy into rules you can follow when emotions would otherwise push you toward costly decisions.Continue reading “My Investment Policy Statement”
Dividends Have a Role — Just Not the Whole Argument
There’s a lot of lost-decade and 40%-drawdown talk being used lately as “proof” that dividend investing is the superior strategy. I’m not anti-dividend, but I disagree with this because I think the argument skips a step. It treats dividend investing as though it’s universally better, when really the question is about which stage of yourContinue reading “Dividends Have a Role — Just Not the Whole Argument”
How to Harvest: A Tour of Retirement Withdrawal Strategies
Most financial conversations are about accumulation. Save more, invest smarter, compound longer. Almost nobody talks about the other half of the equation: how do you actually turn a pile of assets into a paycheck once you stop earning one? That’s the Wealth Harvest phase, and the strategy you pick matters as much as the portfolioContinue reading “How to Harvest: A Tour of Retirement Withdrawal Strategies”
Share the Fruits of Capitalism
I want to make a case for something that used to be considered common sense: capitalism is the greatest economic system ever devised by human beings. Not perfect — nothing is — but the most effective wealth-creating, poverty-reducing, standard-of-living-improving engine in the history of civilization. And more importantly, I want to make the case thatContinue reading “Share the Fruits of Capitalism”
Robinhood: Six Months of the Good and the Bad
I’ve been a Fidelity customer since 2012, housing every investment account I owned there. In 2022, I even started putting every purchase on the Fidelity Visa Signature Rewards Card. Fully immersed in the Fidelity ecosystem, I never looked elsewhere. Then Robinhood started showing up everywhere. So in April 2025, I opened an account, just toContinue reading “Robinhood: Six Months of the Good and the Bad”
My All-American Portfolio
I’ve previously laid out the case for and against holding international exposure. Both sides have real merit. But I didn’t tell you what I actually do with my own money. Here it is: I hold zero international stocks. My retirement accounts and my taxable brokerage are all VTI, all the time. No VXUS, no VEA,Continue reading “My All-American Portfolio”
The Race to Zero: How the Cost of Investing Went from Robbery to Free
For most of the twentieth century, investing in the stock market wasn’t just risky — it was expensive. Not in the “markets go up and down” kind of way. Expensive in the “you’re paying a toll just to play” kind of way. Commissions, sales loads, management fees — the financial industry had built a remarkablyContinue reading “The Race to Zero: How the Cost of Investing Went from Robbery to Free”
Dividend Irrelevance, Revisited
The Modigliani-Miller Dividend Irrelevance Theorem is one of those ideas that every finance student encounters and most never fully reconcile with how markets actually behave. The theorem holds that, under a set of idealized assumptions, a company’s dividend policy has no effect on its value or on shareholder wealth. Whether a company pays out itsContinue reading “Dividend Irrelevance, Revisited”
