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This is right but your implication is wrong. You get rich from working and index funds are a way to preserve and modestly increase that wealth. Boglehead thinking probably won't help people making minimum wage or whatever because if you invest almost nothing to begin with you'll get fairly little out. It also won't make you super-rich if that's what you want.
when your health is poor and corporate America has drained every ounce of life out of you
This sounds completely wrong. Working a salaried job in tech is one of the least stressful, lowest risk, and highest paying ways to earn money. It's easy mode (if you can get in the door). Hustling leveraged real estate or some other kind of "passive income" is much harder and riskier.
If you dont like your current dev work, negotiate or move, its stupidly easy compared to any other engineering or sciences, anywhere in the world.
I’m now at a point where my investments in index funds kick off nearly enough to cover my expenses. It’s an incredible thing that I’m super proud of.
Your take here is reckless and I hope nobody takes it seriously. I’m not advocating for putting your life on hold to work a 9-5 just to save - but if you’re not sticking some cash into safe investment vehicles as you go then you’re just playing on hard mode.
no one gets rich by diversfying, it is just a fairy tale US workers are being fed once they start working with company-sponsored 401k’s and the like
I'm not sure if this is some prosperity gospel silly-ness, but I think folks reading this deserve a disclaimer: Buffett's college mentor was Benjamin Graham -- the father of value investing, Gates mom was friends with Buffett and set up Bill's first contract with IBM, Zuckerburg's parents offered each of their children the opportunity to go to Harvard or open a McDonald's franchise. Six of the top 1000 richest people have the last name Walton. Failure -- as most of the world know's it -- never exists for most folks in the Forbes list. They were always going to be very very comfortable. Putting too much stock in their success is like watching Skii-Ball at Chuckie Cheese to learn bowling.
once you are super rich surely you’ll set some money aside to make sure you stick around in high society. but no one - not a single soul has ever gotten rich that way.
I have no idea what your 2nd paragraph is for…?
1. Berkshire has not significantly outperformed the S&P500 for 20 years. Go take a look, they've basically converged. Markets become more competitive over time. People lose their edge.
2. Investment returns in excess of diversified market returns (which represent underlying growth across the entire economy) ARE zero sum. If you get them, Berkshire does not and quant firms do not and hedge funds do not. If you can beat these guys, don't use your money. Go get a job doing this.
3. Watching Michael Phelps swim is a terrible way to learn to swim. Anatomically he's totally aberrant, but he's also optimizing for fractions of a second racing across an indoor olympic pool. That's all inapplicable to basically everyone swimming anywhere.
You're choosing not to hear what folks are saying and I wish you luck. Your hubris will be rewarded justly by markets, but perhaps only after a few confidence building wins that convince you random jitters of a trend line are really signs of your hidden brilliance yet to be recognized.
I'd like to retire like the people in this study https://www.ramseysolutions.com/retirement/the-national-stud...
If you want to be Warren Buffet rich you're playing a different game than me.
no thanks, not for me
And if you go by your principle argument, several others are far greater than Buffet, such as James Simons, who's strategy is diametrically opposed to Buffet's.
I think many investors are trying to preserve what wealth they've accumulated through saving/inheritance, and are very happy with modest returns, or even just preserving what they have.
jokes aside surely there are plenty of people who gambled and lost their entire accounts on 1 or 2 stocks. but there is a difference in buying biotech startup out of Springfield MO and buying Apple
my basic argument isn’t that you should blow your savings on some single stock of some rando company but that doing something like 45% Apple, 20% Amazon, and spred another 20% among 2-3 companies in energy etc… is much better option than buying index fund. and over last decade would have 100x your money over VTSAX… and is just as “safe”