I Will Teach You to Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No B.S. Just a 6-Week Program That Works.

by Ramit Sethi

week six 1 Figure out your investing style (thirty minutes). Decide whether you want the simple investment options of a target date fund or the increased control (and complexity) of index funds. I recommend a target date fund as the 85 Percent Solution. 2 Research your investments (three hours to one week). If you’ve decided on a target date fund, research the funds from Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, and Schwab (see contact info). This should take a few hours. If you’re constructing your own portfolio, it will take more time (and more money to meet the minimums of each fund). Use the Swensen model as a basic template and prioritize which funds you’ll buy today and which you’ll get later. Once you decide on an asset allocation, research funds using a fund screener like the one at Vanguard (search “Vanguard fund screener”). 3 Buy your fund(s) (one hour to one week). Buying a target date fund is easy: First, transfer money to your investment account. (For 401(k)s, you should already be directing money from each paycheck into your 401(k) account. For Roth IRAs, this money should be waiting in your savings account from Chapter 5. If you don’t have cash lying around to invest, set a savings goal and wait until you have enough to invest in your first fund.) Once the money is ready and has been transferred to your investment account, log in to your account, enter the ticker symbol, and you’re finished. If you’re buying individual index funds, you’ll usually need to buy one at a time an...