The Simple Path to Wealth Quotes

“Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.” —Coco Chanel”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” — Jack Canfield”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Since money is the single most powerful tool we have for navigating this complex world we’ve created, understanding it is critical. If you choose to master it, money becomes a wonderful servant. If you don’t, it will surely master you.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Life choices are not always about the money, but you should always be clear about the financial impact of the choices you make. Sound investing is not complicated. Save a portion of every dollar you earn or that otherwise comes your way.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Once 4% of your assets can cover your expenses, consider yourself financially independent. Put another way, financial independence = 25x your annual expenses. That is, if you are living on $20,000 you have reached financial independence with $500,000 invested.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“When interest rates rise, bond prices fall. When interest rates fall, bond prices rise. In either case, if you hold a bond to the end of its term you will, barring default, get exactly what you paid for it.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“If your interest rate is... Less than 3%, pay it off slowly and route the money to your investments instead. Between 3-5%, do whatever feels most comfortable: Either put the money to debt payment or investments. More than 5%, pay it off ASAP.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“When you can live on 4% of your investments per year, you are financially independent.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Before you decide to use kicking techniques on the street ask yourself this question: ‘Am I Bruce Lee?’ If the answer is ‘no’ keep your feet on the ground.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Bogle’s brilliance, for us investors, was to shift the ownership of his new company to the mutual funds it operates. Since we investors own those funds, through our ownership of shares in them, we in effect own Vanguard.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“But Dad,” my little girl once said to me, “I know money is important. I just don’t want to spend my life thinking about it.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“You know, if you could learn to cater to the king, you wouldn’t have to live on rice and beans.” To which the monk replies: “If you could learn to live on rice and beans, you wouldn’t have to cater to the king.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“When interest rates rise, bond prices fall. When interest rates fall, bond prices rise. In either case, if you hold a bond to the end of its term you will, barring default, get exactly what you paid for it. Stage 6 As you’ve likely guessed, the length of the term of a bond is our third risk factor and it also helps determine the interest rate paid.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“In the simplest terms: When you buy stock you are buying a part ownership in a company. When you buy bonds you are loaning money to a company or government agency.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“The lines between need and want are continually and intentionally blurred.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Ironically, a crash at the beginning of your investing life is a gift. In fact, any pullback in stock prices is a gift while you are in the process of accumulating your wealth.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“OK, but what do I do about the debt I have? While the mantra here is “avoid debt at all costs,” if you already have it, it is worth considering if paying it off ahead of schedule is the best use of your capital. In today’s environment, here’s my rough guideline: If your interest rate is... Less than 3%, pay it off slowly and route the money to your investments instead. Between 3-5%, do whatever feels most comfortable: Either put the money to debt payment or investments. More than 5%, pay it off ASAP. But this is just looking at the numbers. There is a lot to be said for focusing on just getting it out of your life and moving on. Especially if keeping your debt under control has been a problem for you.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“We can learn to think in this same way. Again, let’s use VTSAX in exploring this idea. Suppose yesterday you said, “Mmm. This idea of owning VTSAX makes sense to me. I’m gonna get me some.” And having said that, you sent Vanguard a check for $10,000. At yesterday’s close the price of VTSAX was $53.67. Your $10,000 bought you 186.3238308 shares. If VTSAX shares are trading at $56 per share a week from now, you might say, “Mmm. My $10,000 is now worth $10,434. Yippee. Mr. Collins sure is smart.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Being independently wealthy is every bit as much about limiting needs as it is about how much money you have. It has less to do with how much you earn—high-income earners often go broke while low-income earners get there—than what you value. Money can buy many things, none of which is more important than your financial independence. Here’s”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom. A”
― Terry Pratchett, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Three things saved us: 1. Our unwavering 50% savings rate. 2. Avoiding debt. We’ve never even had a car payment. 3. Finally embracing the indexing lessons Jack Bogle—the founder of the Vanguard Group and the inventor of index funds—perfected decades ago.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“if you are willing to do a bit more work, you could slightly smooth out the wild ride and possibly outperform over time by adding 10%–25% in bonds. If you do, about once a year, you will want to rebalance your funds to maintain your chosen allocation. You might also want to rebalance any time the market makes a major move (20%+) up or down. This means you will sell shares in whichever asset class has performed better and buy shares in the one that has lagged.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“this is The Simple Path to Wealth I created for my then-teenager: Put all your eggs into one large and diverse basket, add more whenever you can, and forget about it. The more you add, the faster you’ll get there. Job done.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Study after study shows that a portfolio of 100% stocks—which is what VTSAX gives you—provides the greatest return over time. However, if you are not tough enough to stay the course or if you get scared and bail when the storms are raging, you are going to drown. But that’s a psychological failure, not a downside of this asset class. As an aside, there are studies that indicate holding a 10%–25% position in bonds with 75%–90% stocks will actually very slightly outperform a position holding 100% stocks. It is also slightly less volatile. If you want to go that route and take on the slightly more complicated process of periodically rebalancing to maintain the allocation, you’ll get no argument from me.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Owning 100% stocks like this is considered a very aggressive investment allocation. It is aggressive, and in this wealth accumulation phase, you should be. You have decades ahead, and you’ll be adding new money as you go. Market ups and downs don’t matter because you’ll avoid panic and stay the course. If anything, you recognize drops as the “stocks-on-sale” buying opportunities they are. Perhaps forty years from now (or whenever you are living on your portfolio), you might want to add a bond index fund to smooth the ride. Worry about that then.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Owning 100% stocks like this is considered a very aggressive investment allocation. It is aggressive, and in this wealth accumulation phase, you should be.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“Put all your eggs in one basket and forget about it. The great irony of investing is that the more you watch and fiddle with your holdings, the less well you are likely to do. Fill your basket, add as much as you can along the way, and ignore it the rest of the time. You’ll likely wake up rich. Here’s the basket: VTSAX.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“The three tools Once you’ve sorted through your three considerations, you are ready to build your portfolio, and you’ll need only these three tools to do it. See, I promised this would be simple! 1. Stocks: VTSAX (Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund). Stocks provide the best returns over time and serve as our inflation hedge. This is our core wealth-building tool. (See Chapter 17 for variants of this same fund.) 2. Bonds: VBTLX (Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund). Bonds provide income, tend to smooth out the rough ride of stocks, and serve as our deflation hedge. 3. Cash: Cash is good to have around to cover routine expenses and to meet emergencies. Cash is also king during times of deflation. The more prices drop, the more your cash can buy. But when prices rise (inflation), its value steadily erodes. In these days of low interest rates, idle cash doesn’t have much earning potential. I suggest you keep as little as possible on hand, consistent with your needs and comfort level. Typically, money market funds pay slightly more than bank savings accounts, but not always. And while money markets are considered to be extremely safe, they don’t offer the FDIC insurance (up to $250,000) found with bank accounts. At various times, we’ve kept our cash in our local bank or in our online bank. But normally, I slightly prefer the money market option, and at the moment here in 2025, ours is in Vanguard’s VMRXX (Vanguard Cash Reserves Federal Money Market Fund). So that’s it. Three simple tools. Two index mutual funds and a money market and/or bank account. A wealth-builder, an inflation hedge, a deflation hedge, and cash for daily needs and emergencies. As promised, the combination is low cost, effective, diversified, and simple. You can fine-tune your allocation in each investment to meet your own personal considerations. Want a smoother ride? Willing to accept a lower long-term return and slower wealth accumulation? Just increase the percentage in VBTLX and/or cash. Want maximum growth potential? Hold more in VTSAX. In the coming chapters, we’ll talk about index funds and bonds. Then we’ll explore a couple of specific strategies and portfolios to get you started and take a look at how to select the asset allocation best suited to your needs and temperament.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“One of my very few regrets is that I spent far too much time worrying about how things might work out. It’s a huge waste, but it is a bit hardwired into me. Don’t do it. The older I get, the more I hold each day precious. I’ve become steadily more relentless in purging from my life things, activities, and people that no longer add value while seeking out and adding those that do.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

“There are three key principles that have persisted from those letters, through the blog, and now in both editions of this book: 1. Spend less than you earn. 2. Invest the surplus. 3. Avoid debt.”
― J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life