The Best Investing Advice I Was Ever Given
When I first started in my career, I worked in banking. I remember one of the contacts I was given as part of our corporate mentor network was one of the head's of wealth management for the area. His job was specifically to cater to, please, and help grow assets of rich families.
Not "well-off" or upper middle class. Rich as in "our biggest problem is figuring out what our child should do with their time since they and their kids will never have to work a day in their life" rich.
So, after riding an elevator up to his office overlooking the Willamette River, I grabbed a coffee from the break room and sat down in his office.
We talked the usual corporate small talk for a bit before I asked, "So, what I'm fresh out of school and I am trying to figure out what to invest in and how to get started. Got any advice for me?"
His response was simple, "The best investment you can make is the one you made 10 years ago."
To that, he went on to explain the best investments are those that you keep for a while through market shifts and tribulations. Because an investment is a bet that your asset is going to be worth more in the future than it is today. It is by its nature something where time is a variable.
So, as many of us are watching the S&P 500 day by day, chewing our nails, and sweating bullets, I am choosing to remember his advice: buy broadly and hold your investments for the long term.