Investing
I have a keen interest in personal finance 💰 and investing 📈, which led me to discover the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) community several years ago. The FIRE movement, popularized by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin in their book Your Money or Your Life, emphasizes extreme saving and investing with the goal of retiring significantly earlier than traditional methods typically allow. FIRE enthusiasts strive to attain financial freedom, enabling them to choose how they spend their time.
While I'm not a fan of the FIRE movement in its purest form (since I believe the ultimate goal should be finding a job you love rather than stopping work altogether, and I dislike the idea of avoiding things you enjoy just to save money), I do think everyone can benefit from the core principles of saving and investing that FIRE promotes. In fact, I apply these principles myself to some extent.
Although there are many investing strategies available, my preferred one is called lazy investing 💤. This approach involves investing in a few low-cost index funds and holding them for the long term. Two of my favorite finance books, The Simple Path to Wealth, by J.L. Collins, and The Bogleheads' Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio, by Taylor Larimore, explain this strategy in detail. One aspect of lazy investing that I particularly like is that it requires minimal effort while outperforming the majority of active investing strategies employed by the so-called "experts". My current lazy portfolio (managed by the great Spanish neobank MyInvestor) is based on a balanced strategy considering 50% stocks and 50% bonds (advocated by Benjamin Graham, Jack Bogle, and many others). In particular, my portfolio consists of the following index funds and their respective allocations:
- Fidelity S&P 500 Index Fund P-ACC-EUR (IE00BYX5MX67): 25%.
- Fidelity MSCI World Index Fund P-ACC-EUR (IE00BYX5NX33): 25%. This fund overlaps with the previous one, making my total allocation in the S&P 500 and non-US stocks around 40% and 10%, respectively.
- Vanguard Global Bond Index Fund EUR Hedged Acc (IE00B18GC888): 50%.
Regardless of your financial preferences, I strongly encourage you to start investing today, as it is crucial for your long-term financial well-being. It is alarming how many people do not understand the importance of investing (I was one of them some years ago 🤦🏻♂️), which is why I have included this section on my website. Getting started with investing is probably the most important financial decision that you can make today, and I am not exaggerating!
Feel free to contact me for information about investing and the FIRE movement.