About this episode

The episode demystifies investing, explaining key concepts and the differences between saving and investing.

For the longest time I thought investing was a members only club and nobody sent me the invite. People would say things like index fund and expense ratio and diversification, and I would smile and nod like I had any idea what was happening. Spoiler: I did not. This week Alex walks me through the whole thing from the very beginning, and it turns out the scary part was never the math. It was just the vocabulary. The Solution Saving vs investing. Saving is parking your car in the garage. Investing is sending your money out to get a full time job. They aren't competing, they're doing two different things. Stocks vs bonds. Buying stock means owning a tiny piece of a company. Buying a bond means lending money and collecting interest. Owning part of a bakery vs lending the bakery money. Why Alex loves index funds. Instead of betting on one football player, you buy the whole team. Roughly 90 percent of professional fund managers fail to beat the S&P 500 over a ten year period, which means the pros usually lose to the thing you can just buy yourself. ETFs vs mutual funds. Both are baskets of investments. Mutual funds price once at the end of the trading day and often have minimums…

People in this episode

Guest: Alex

Topics covered

• investing
• finance
• index funds
• ETFs
• mutual funds
• financial literacy

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