J.L. Collins

And for a decade, you would have been accumulating shares at what turned out to be bargain prices.

And then you would have been well-situated for the 15-year bull market that followed.

So as long as you have a long time horizon, bear markets and crashes, even if they're a decade long, are your friend.

They allow you to acquire shares at a bargain price because you are continuing on that path.

So I think one of the most important things for people to understand is that corrections, bear markets, crashes are a perfectly normal part of the process.

Eventually, the market turns around and continues its relentless rise.

And if you stay the course during those drops and continue buying, these things are a blessing for you.

Yeah, so in my world, it's not a function of age because as we talked about earlier, there are people in the FI community and following the simple path who retire in their 30s, right?

And then some of those people turn around maybe five years later and they go back to work.

So the wealth accumulation is when you have earned income.

flowing in.

And if you're following the simple path, you're taking a big chunk of that earned income, as we talked about earlier, I chose 50%, and diverting it to buy your freedom.

And you do that by buying these low-cost broad-based index funds.

When you step away from that earned income,

Now you want to live on the portfolio and stocks are volatile, make no mistake.

And most people would like something to smooth that volatility.

And that's the role the bonds play.

So now you add bonds to the portfolio.

I like the total bond market index fund and Vanguard's VBTLX.

And what percentage of bonds you choose is kind of up to you based on how troubled you are by that volatility that stocks provide.