Most of what makes investing feel hard is theater. The part that actually compounds is almost boring enough to ignore.
If you strip away stock-picking, market-timing, and the financial-news adrenaline, what’s left is a small number of decisions: how much to invest, what to buy, how to split it, and how rarely to touch it. Index funds exist so that the second decision is easy.
The four decisions
How much: whatever you can automate every payday without noticing. What: broad, low-cost index funds. The split: a mix of stock and bond index funds matched to how long until you need the money. How often: rebalance once a year, otherwise leave it alone.
The hardest part of this strategy is doing nothing while the news tells you to do something.
That’s the whole system. It will never be the most exciting thing you read here, which is precisely why it works — there is nothing to optimize, tinker with, or burn out on.
