Thirteen slides on the boring, durable principles that separate the financially well from everyone else.
Money decisions stack. Do them in the wrong order and the math punishes you. Do them in the right order and it compounds.
Three to six months of essential expenses, parked in a high-yield savings account.
of essential expenses.
The #1 driver of long-term wealth destruction is selling investments at a loss to cover an emergency. The buffer prevents that.
Credit cards charge 20%+. The S&P 500 returns ~10%. The math is not subtle.
average credit card APR.
a 22% guaranteed, tax-free return on every dollar applied. Nothing in the public markets touches that.
Stack the tax shelters before you ever buy something in a regular brokerage.
Contribute enough to get the full employer match. Anything less is a pay cut you're voluntarily taking.
Up to the annual limit. Roth if you expect higher taxes later; Traditional if lower.
Return to the 401(k) and push toward the legal contribution limit.
Then — and only then — open a taxable brokerage for excess savings.
$200/month at a 7% real return for 40 years.
from $96k in contributions.
A simple rule of thumb: stock allocation ≈ 110 − your age. Younger investors can absorb more volatility because they have more years to recover.
Low-fee. Diversified. Boring. The single most important financial innovation for ordinary investors.
A 1% annual fee on a 40-year portfolio quietly eats ~25% of your final balance. Index funds typically charge 0.03–0.10%.
A total-market index gives you a slice of every public company in the country. Diversification, automatic.
~85% of active funds trail their benchmark over 15+ years. The data is not a coin flip.
Invest the same amount on the same day every month, regardless of what the market is doing.
The best-performing accounts belonged to people who had forgotten the accounts existed. Inactivity is a feature.
Use the wrappers the government offers. They are not loopholes — they are the intended path.
Employer-sponsored. Pre-tax contributions, taxed on withdrawal. Often comes with a match.
Individual. Roth (post-tax in, tax-free out) or Traditional (pre-tax in).
Triple-tax-advantaged: deductible in, grows tax-free, tax-free out for medical. The best account in the code.
State-sponsored. Grows tax-free for qualified education expenses. Many states give a deduction.
Insurance is a tool to transfer financial ruin. Buy it for the catastrophes you can't self-fund — skip it for everything else.
If anyone depends on your income, get a 20- or 30-year level term policy. Costs a few hundred dollars a year in your 30s.
Skip: whole life. It's an expensive product dressed as an investment.
You are far more likely to be disabled than to die during your working years. Most employer policies are insufficient.
$1M of coverage costs ~$200/year. Catches you if a lawsuit exceeds your auto or home limits.
There is no secret. The strategies that build wealth are decades old, freely available, and almost universally ignored — not because they don't work, but because they're slow.
The discipline is the strategy.
Budgeting, accounts, the order of operations.
youtube.com/results?search_query=personal+finance+basics →The low-cost, long-horizon philosophy.
youtube.com/results?search_query=index+funds+bogleheads →— end —