Ross Anderson
speaker
73 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard 7 Jul
Ross Anderson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
But between three, five years or longer as a time horizon, I would say it's mostly a good time to keep investing, not overthink it and just continue to be a dollar cost average person and put that money into the market. The second question that you asked or piece of that was what to invest in.
The broadest answer would be if we don't have really specific thoughts about what we want to own, just buy all of it, right? And so when I say that, that typically means broad-based index funds. The United States, you can buy all of it in basically a total stock market index. You could also buy all of the companies outside of the U.S. in an all-world ex-U.S. index.
So with two positions, you could basically own the entire world stock market. To me, that's a great answer for somebody that doesn't have specific things that they've researched and really want to dive into. And that is a completely valid way to invest. And honestly, I think people find it overly simple and they want to fight that. They're looking to make it harder.
Fight that instinct as much as you can. We can keep this really, really easy, really low cost and not have to put that much thought into it if we're buying really broad-based, very well-diversified index funds across a bunch of things. You mentioned that it's been kind of a volatile year and you're right in the US. We are down year to date. International stocks aren't.
So if we've been diversified, you could actually have positive gains in your portfolio so far on a year to date basis. And so I do think making sure that you've got some international exposure and not just the United States in your portfolio is a really nice way to make sure that you're balanced out and that we're kind of spreading our eggs into multiple baskets as well.
I think that that's correct. If it's something that you need on the short term, I love your high yield savings account. I think that's a good place to have money parked or even something like CDs or conservative like that. Yes, with anywhere that you're earning money, ultimately, we're going to pay taxes.
If you own stocks or index funds in a brokerage account and you hold that in there for more than a year, you're going to move into the long-term capital gains territory. That's going to be a lower tax rate than what you pay on your income always. So for most people, they pay 15%. It goes as high as... 20 or really 23.8, depending on if we're including the net investment income tax.
But it's always going to be lower than what you're paying on your income. And so there's also opportunities in our lives. If you're going to do what you're talking about, and let's say you're going to explore the FIRE movement. The year that you sell those stocks might be a year that you're not earning any income.
If you quit your job and you sell those stocks, you might be in a really low tax bracket. Some gains might be completely free federally. If you're in the 12% income tax bracket, you can actually sell stocks at 0% capital gains rates on the federal level. And so when we get into really specific planning, that's when we can look at those opportunities. But I wouldn't
choose not to invest because of the fear of the taxes, right? You pay taxes on that high yield savings account every single year. They send you a 1099 and then you put that in your tax return. You pay income on that too. Some people will choose not to make any money just so that they don't pay any taxes. I would much rather make plenty of money, plenty of investment gains. Be smart about it.
Let them get into that long-term territory if at all possible. But paying a few bucks on earned money is not going to be the end of the world.
Happy to hear it.
My pleasure. Happy to be here.
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