The Optometrist’s Guide to Investing 101
An Introduction to Investing
By: Dr. Dat Bui (Last updated: October 11, 2022)
Investing is a very daunting process, but is very rewarding and a necessary step to ensure financial well-being. Understanding how investing works and what investment vehicles do are vital first steps on your path to financial freedom.
When you hear investing, you might conceptualize this image of a middle-aged man on Wall Street frantically yelling “BUY IT NOW! SELL IT NOW!" at the Dow-Jones ticker display.
Average, everyday investing is nothing like that. Investing is actually quite boring and mundane, like watching grass grow.
The great thing about investing is that you can go as complex or as simple as you want. Even having a basic understanding of investing is enough to make you a successful investor! If you have the smarts to get through 4 hardcore years of optometry school and memorize a bunch of corneal dystrophies, you can invest!
With the online ease of passive low-cost index funds like Vanguard or Fidelity and advancement of robo-advisors such as Betterment or Wealthfront; the days of the high-fee actively-managed funds and financial advisers charging a ridiculous 1-2% asset under management fee is definitely coming to an end. While, there will always be a small group of people who need professional help when it comes to their investing, most doctors can become do-it-yourself investors!
Down the line, if you want to get more involved or complicated, there are many investing books out there. We are also going to be using Vanguard index funds a lot in our examples, simply because we love their low-cost fees. Other brokerage companies include Fidelity, Charles Schwab or E-trade, and are just as great!
In 6 short chapters, we will teach you:
- What is an Investment and Basic Investing Terms
- How to Create The Ideal Portfolio of Stocks and Bonds
- How to Re-balance your Asset Allocation & Other Additional Classes
- How to Quickly Assess a Mutual or Index Fund
- Target Date Retirement Funds and the age of Robo-Advisers; Which Brokerage is right for me
- How to Monitor your Investment Performance and other Wealth-Building Tips
"Average, everyday investing is nothing like that. Investing is actually quite boring and mundane, like watching grass grow"