Guides

Index Funds / ETFs are one of the best innovations in the history of finance. They are far and away the best investing option for most investors – even professionals.

But. They are boring. That’s both a feature and a bug. It’s a feature because investing capital should be a boring, long-term exercise. It’s a bug because everyone wants novelty and excitement.

And in a world of speculation FOMO on stocks, crypto, real estate, etc – it can be hard to just keep doing the boring thing.

The ironic piece of index fund / ETF FOMO is that if you own an index fund…you own all the individual stocks inside the index fund.

For example, VTSAX / VTI owns all the stocks in the US. VTIAX / VXUS owns all the stocks outside the US. And VTWAX / VT owns all the stocks in the whole world.

And yes, the point of an index fund is to own all the stocks. That’s probably obvious if you own one. It’s why you likely bought it. But it’s also easy to forget that you own all these individual stocks when random person on TV or Twitter is chatting up their Tesla stock purchase or talking about the next big thing*.

*And sometimes, it’s not obvious. For example, it’s easy to forget that America’s largest real estate investment firms…are all publicly traded and included in a Total Market Index Fund.

So here’s how to find out how much of each stock you own in your index fund.

[Read more…] about How To See Your Allocation of Stocks with an Index Fund

Even though I think the health benefits of standing are a bit overstated – anything done in moderation is probably going to be better for you.

And in my case – I needed to moderate my sitting.

I generally just did what any normal person would do – stand up every few minutes to stretch, re-focus, drink water, then sit down and go back to work.

But running my own business and working just whatever hours I wanted to work led me to need a small spot at home to talk with clients in a different time zone, and generally have a place out of the way to take care of those tasks that – in an office – would take 10 minutes, but in the home generally end up taking  30 minutes – with a frustrated me and frustrated family members as well.

We have a small place – and I definitely didn’t want to buy or place a desk in my bedroom – or any other room for that matter (we live in a small condo).

And I had the whole standing desk in the back of my mind (very geeky fad) – but they generally cost $$$ and take up wayyyy to much space.

[Read more…] about How I Set Up A Standing Desk + Home Office For $50

I took 4 years of college level Spanish.

I could do 21 different verb conjugations – but never came as close to feeling proficient in Spanish as I did after spending a week in Guatemala.

Language is all about usage and immersion – and I’ve learned that computer languages are no different.

After years of occasionally picking through a Dummies guide or looking at web design classes – I stumbled on a method of learning that has made me fully proficient in HTML and CSS (languages that produce web pages in browsers) in just a few months.

Wanna see more?

[Read more…] about How I Learned HTML and CSS Through Immersion (with no books, courses, or classes)