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Comment by rublev | Hacker News Reader

> I'd suggest you read actual books on personal finance and investment.

Oh boy have I ever. And not a word was retained. Total gibberish. No idea how I can code but not understand finance.

Honestly, I don't have the time to 'get into' finance beyond reading up a couple hours a week. Just need a simple guide, my only goal is to leave my money somewhere for 20 years and not touch it while it grows so I can make $20k/year off my investments eventually. Not looking to day trade or do any of that. Been looking at Canadian Couch Potato (I'm in Canada) and Mr Money Moustache.

I don't have any lofty aspirations. I only want this apartment to be paid off for free every month, at which point I'll have the freedom to wake up every day and do whatever I want.

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I'm also in Canada and I follow the passive investing Couch Potato approach which I've converted to pseudo code here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11528787.

That said if investing doesn't interest you just use a Robo advisor like Wealth Simple (Toronto based). You will pay maybe 0.2% more in fees but your performance will be the same as the couch potato approach, and you'll never need to think about investing.

Buy VTSAX (or any other broad-based, low-fee, 100% stock mutual fund) and call it a day. Fees will eat your lunch far more than you think. Even a difference of 20 basis points (0.2% or 0.002) matters, IMO. Don't pay a fee unless you're 100% sure you're getting more than the fee in value. That's why I love Vanguard (no connection, other than satisfied customer). When you get 5 or 7 years away from needing (not just wanting) the money, then start to scale into REIT or fixed-income strategies to reduce your risk exposure. While you're more than 10 years away from needing it, I think you want to be full risk-on for stocks.

Then, come back in 20 years and upvote this. :)

Check out real estate investment trusts. I think you may get your residual that way.

Will do, thanks. RE: Housing - I've always had a gut feeling that tying your money into an asset like that is a terrible idea because of the infinite number of potential money sucking risks along the way. It seems like something you'd 'get rich' off of on paper, but when you try to sell for that price you'll find nobody is buying. Don't want to end up in that position and again, that's just a gut feeling, didn't really read up on it.

REITs are traded on the market, (pretty much) just like a stock. So you don't have to worry about liquidity being too much of a problem. One example of a REIT is [1].

However, if you really just want to park money for 20 years, you probably want a target year fund like [2] which will have higher risk now (stocks, REITs, etc), and rebalance to lower risk (Bonds) as it gets closer to 2040. It's literally the definition of set it and forget it.

[1] https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0123&...

[2] https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0696&...

edit: I should add, I'm not your financial advisor, and I don't have a fiduciary duty. You should consult with a financial advisor (who has a fiduciary duty) before making any decisions about investments. However, target year funds are frequently (one of) the best decisions for many people.

REITs: -are publicly owned on the stock market -have a legal obligation to pay out 90% of their operating profit through dividends -can own/operate myriad forms of real estate assets, but I'd suggest sticking with REITs that actually own real estate and not mortgages.

That's like, just my .02 though.

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