Investing
How to start investing in index funds
You do not need to pick winners. The approach that has beaten most professionals requires no forecasting at all — and the hardest part of it is…
Almost everything that decides how an investing life turns out is settled in the first month: which account you open, what you buy inside it, and whether you keep buying when the number goes red. The rest is noise sold as insight.
These guides cover the part that matters — how index funds actually work, how much of your money belongs in stocks at your age, why lump-sum usually beats spreading it out, what a taxable brokerage account costs you at tax time, and why a high dividend yield is often a warning rather than a reward. There is no stock picking here and no trading. There is arithmetic, and there is the behaviour that decides whether the arithmetic gets a chance to run.
Calculators for this
Compound interestSee what your savings turn into over time. Add monthly contributions, pick how often it compounds, and compare it against simple interest.
RetirementProject your nest egg to retirement day, then draw it down year by year to see how long it lasts and what it pays you each month.
InflationWhat today’s money will be worth in ten years, and what a past amount is worth now. The quiet tax nobody sends you a bill for.
Crypto pricesLive prices for the major cryptocurrencies with 24-hour and 7-day moves, a converter in any currency, and a plain-English take on the volatility.
Gold & silverLive spot gold and silver by the ounce, gram and kilo. Value any weight you hold, and see the gold-to-silver ratio traders watch.
All 7 investing guides
Investing
What to do when the market crashes
Everyone plans to hold through a downturn. Far fewer do, because a 30% fall arrives as headlines rather than as a statistic.
Investing
Asset allocation: how much in stocks?
Which funds you pick matters far less than one number: the split between stocks and bonds. That ratio explains most of what a portfolio does.
Investing
Dollar-cost averaging vs investing it all at once
Investing a lump sum immediately beats spreading it out most of the time. Whether that makes it the right choice for you is a separate question.
Investing
How a taxable brokerage account is taxed
You are not taxed on growth, you are taxed on selling. Which makes the holding period, and how often you trade, more consequential than most people…
Investing
Dividend investing: the yield trap
A dividend is not free money — the share price drops by roughly what is paid. Which makes a high yield a much weaker signal than it looks.
Investing
Compound interest: why starting today matters
It is not how much you invest. It is how long you give it — which is why starting at 25 and stopping beats starting at 35 and never stopping.