How I Actually Invest

How I got started

I started working at 21 with no financial knowledge — all I knew was to save money for a home and contribute the minimum to get my 401(k) match. That match was step one, before anything else, and it's still the first thing I'd tell anyone to do.

From there it roughly matches the flowchart on this site: HSA if available, high-interest debt, maxing an IRA, back to the 401(k), then a taxable brokerage account once those are full.

Where I actually invest

Fidelity is my brokerage for everything — 401(k) rollovers, IRA, and my taxable account all live there. I didn't pick it for any deep reason; it's just where I opened my first account and never had a reason to leave.

What I actually hold

Fifty-five percent is the boring core — 45% FZROX and 10% FZILX, both zero expense ratio — and I never touch it. Another 5% sits in cash. The remaining 40% is where I take risk deliberately.

I don't touch the FZROX/FZILX core holdings when the market drops. That money is on autopilot regardless of headlines.

I don't currently hold any bonds. I'm still decades from retirement and I'm comfortable with the volatility that comes with being all-in on stocks. That'll change as I get closer to needing the money.

Where this differs from the safe default

Concentration builds wealth, diversification preserves wealth.

The Investing Basics guide on this site would tell you to skip QQQ and the individual stock picks and hold the total market — and for most people, that's the right call. 40% in a tech-weighted index plus single companies is genuinely more concentrated and more volatile than FZROX alone.

I do it anyway because I'm fine watching that slice drop a lot in a bad year, and I'd rather have a controlled amount of 'conviction money' in individual bets than feel tempted to gamble with the core index holdings instead. If that trade-off doesn't sound fine to you, the boring version is genuinely the better choice — that's not false modesty, it's just math.

The cards I actually carry

These are for points, not for credit. Every one of them is paid in full every month — the moment a balance carries, the interest wipes out the rewards several times over and the whole thing stops making sense. If you're not already paying in full automatically, one cashback card beats ten of these.

A list this long only works because the annual fees are worth more to me than they cost, and because opening accounts doesn't tempt me to spend more. Both of those are personal. The credit guide covers what actually moves your score, which matters more than any of this.