Investing. Read a few solid, no BS books by people like Bernstein. Realize that there is a ton of BS out there. Develop your own investing strategy and execute it yourself.
In the end you save money, get some financial security and stop asking yourself “do I know what i’m doing?”
Especially if you're young! Just regularly saving a small amount of your earnings and regularly putting it into a broad-based, low-cost index fund can make a huge difference in your wealth over time. Compound interest for the win.
This is really true. I can remember being in my 20's and thinking "I've saved $10K. Big deal".
But what I've noticed is with slow, steady investing is that it really snowballs. It's not long before you look at your returns and notice that you made more from your investments that year than you did your salary.
It should resonate with the HN crowd as it starts from the basics and builds up a strategy. Very understandable. It then uses that to help you build an overall investment strategy.
Bernstein is in line with the Boglehead investing theory. Own the market, don't try and beat it.
The r/personalfinance was an amazing resource for me. It basically recommends buying and holding index funds, and provides concrete steps on how to do so. Minuscule fees plus returns tied to the market average which only 2% of financial advisers are able to consistently beat anyway.
Probably a couple months by reading a few key books and following up to understand the specifics.
And no, I went with an index investment strategy, not trying to beat the market. But it really helps to understand why index investing is a good choice.
I wonder what to read to understand how the fact that so much money is invested in index funds these days could eventually become a problem in a crisis situation and how to profit if that happens.
In the end you save money, get some financial security and stop asking yourself “do I know what i’m doing?”