How I Actually Invest

The order I actually follow

I started at 22 with the simplest possible move: contribute enough to my employer's 401(k) to get the full match. That 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

Most of it sits in three Fidelity funds: FZROX (a total U.S. stock market index fund) and FZILX (a total international index fund) — both zero-expense-ratio, broad, boring index funds — plus FSELX (Fidelity's semiconductor sector fund), which is a real bet on one industry, not a diversified holding.

The rest is individual stocks: about 10% in Amazon, and another 10% spread across a handful of other individual companies I'm higher-conviction on. That's real money, not play money — it can go to zero, and I treat it accordingly.

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

The Investing Basics guide on this site would tell you to skip the sector fund and the individual stock picks — and for most people, that's the right call. A concentrated semiconductor fund plus 20% in individual companies is genuinely more concentrated and more volatile than a plain total-market index fund.

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.

How often I check in

Once a year, usually in January, I look at how the individual stock picks have grown relative to everything else and trim back if any single position has gotten too large. I bump up my 401(k) percentage if I got a raise. Outside of that, I don't look.

Checking more often mostly just adds stress without changing the outcome.

What I deliberately don't do

• I don't let the individual stock picks grow past a size where losing them all would actually hurt me — if a position gets too big, I trim it back.

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

• I don't check my balance daily. It's automated, and I let it run.