Here’s how I turned $500 into $108,000 in just one of my investment accounts, and more importantly, why most people spend their entire lives being terrified of the word “investing” when it’s actually the simplest way to build wealth that’s ever been invented.
But first, let me tell you about the moment that completely changed my relationship with money forever.
The first time I heard about investing, I was 22 and eavesdropping on a conversation I had no business joining. Two of my guy friends were casually discussing their retirement accounts over pizza, throwing around terms like “contribution limits” and “index funds” with the same ease they debated whether pineapple belonged on pizza.
I knew what investing was… in theory. I’d heard the term enough times to nod knowingly when it came up in conversations. But knowing about something and actually doing something are two entirely different beasts, especially when you’re a twenty-something woman convinced she doesn’t have enough money to invest and terrified of making the wrong choice.
So I did what so many of us do when we feel out of our depth: I lied.
“Oh yeah, totally,” I said, jumping into their conversation with false confidence. “I’ve been thinking about opening one too.” The words tumbled out before I could stop them, my ego refusing to let me be the only one at the table who hadn’t started investing yet.
They must have seen right through me because the next thing I knew, they were explaining that investing wasn’t about picking the perfect stock or having some innate gift for predicting market movements. They’d actually tried the stock-picking route themselves, they told me, spending hours researching companies and analyzing charts, only to discover that their carefully chosen individual stocks were consistently outperformed by boring old index funds (I’ll cover what this is later).
“It’s not about picking stocks,” one of them said, demolishing my biggest excuse in a single sentence. “It’s about starting… the sooner the better.”
They encouraged me to get started, and I nodded enthusiastically, fully intending to open an account the very next week. I was motivated. I was inspired. I was going to be a responsible adult who invested for her future.
And then I did absolutely nothing for another five years.
The problem wasn’t motivation, it was paralysis. I knew I should invest, but I didn’t know how to invest. Not the philosophical how, but the literal, click-by-click, step-by-step how. Which website do I go to? What buttons do I click? What if I accidentally put my money in the wrong place and lose it all? The gap between knowing I should do something and knowing exactly how to do it felt insurmountable.
Every few months, I’d get a burst of determination and pull up a brokerage website, only to stare at the screen feeling overwhelmed by options I didn’t understand. Traditional IRA or Roth? Growth funds or balanced funds? What’s an expense ratio? Why are there so many different versions of essentially the same thing? I have to pay a fee? I’d close the browser tab and promise myself I’d figure it out “next time.”
This went on for five years. Five years of false starts, good intentions, and the slow, creeping anxiety that I was falling behind while everyone else was getting ahead. Five years of compound interest I’ll never get back.
It wasn’t until I was 27 that everything changed, and it happened because of another conversation with a different guy friend… this one more adamant than the rest. We were at a coffee shop when he looked straight towards my direction with a genuine yet pleading intensity.
“Listen,” he said, looking me dead in the eye. “If there’s only one thing you ever take from our conversation, if you ignore every other piece of advice I’ve ever given you, please, please open a Roth IRA.”
I started to give him my usual nodding and “I know,” but he cut me off.
“It’s practically a guaranteed way for anyone to become a millionaire,” he continued. “Not get-rich-quick millionaire. Not win-the-lottery millionaire. Just regular, patient, consistent millionaire.”
Something about the way he said it, the urgency in his voice, the way his eyebrows lifted in that particular arch of someone who genuinely cared, made me lean in and really hear what he was saying. The fact that he was already successfully investing in real estate also added a bit more weight to his words and finally broke through my wall of procrastination. This wasn’t just casual conversation. This was someone who cared about me… even begging me to do something that would change my life. With the ocean of investing advice being thrown at me constantly, I really needed someone to just tell me: hey, if you don’t do anything else but just one thing, let it be this. That singular focus cut through all the noise.
That night, I didn’t overthink. I didn’t create a pros-and-cons list or spend hours comparing brokerages. I simply opened my laptop, went to Vanguard, and started clicking buttons.
The minimum investment was $500. I had $500. It wasn’t everything I had, but it wasn’t nothing either. It felt like exactly the right amount to take seriously without being terrified of losing.
As I went through the process, account setup, beneficiary information, investment selection, I realized something that would have saved me five years of paralysis: it wasn’t nearly as complicated as I’d made it in my head. Yes, there were choices to make, but they weren’t make-or-break, life-altering decisions. They were just… choices. I could change them later if I needed to.
When I clicked the final “submit” button, transferring $500 from my checking account into my new Roth IRA, I felt something I hadn’t expected: uncertainty. Not excitement, not pride, not relief that the band-aid was finally ripped. Just uncertainty if I’d completed the process correctly or if anything was even going to come of it.
Then I promptly tried not to think about it, because watching your investments daily is like watching grass grow, except the grass might randomly catch fire or turn into gold.
Six months later, I finally worked up the courage to check my account. I had made $25.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, $25 isn’t exactly life-changing money. But here’s the thing: that $25 completely blew my mind.
Why? Because if I had left that same $500 sitting in my savings account, it would have earned exactly $0.42 in the same time period. Let me repeat that: forty-two cents. That’s not even enough to buy a gumball from one of those machines at the mall.
That $24.58 difference wasn’t just money, it was a revelation wrapped in a reality check with a side of “holy crap, I’ve been doing this all wrong.” All that time I spent being scared, my money was basically doing the financial equivalent of chilling on the couch eating Hot Cheetos. Meanwhile, it could have been out there working, growing, making more little money babies.
That $24.58 taught me more about wealth building than any book or article ever could. It showed me that investing wasn’t some mysterious art form. It was just putting money where it could actually grow instead of where it would slowly lose value to inflation. That $25 I earned wasn’t just a nice little bonus, it was my first taste of what it means to become a money multiplier instead of just a money worker.
The Penny That Broke the Bank
To really understand the explosive power of compound interest, let me tell you about a simple thought experiment that never fails to blow people’s minds. It’s called the penny problem, and it goes like this:
Would you rather have a million dollars right now, or a single penny that doubles every day for 30 days?
Most people would grab the million dollars without hesitation. After all, a penny is practically worthless, right? Even if it doubles every day, how much could it possibly grow in just a month? Let’s see what happens to that penny, day by day.
Day 1: $0.01
Day 2: $0.02
Day 3: $0.04
Day 4: $0.08
Day 5: $0.16
Pretty underwhelming so far, right? After five days, you’ve got 16 cents. That won’t even buy you a piece of gum. Meanwhile, the person who took the million dollars is probably laughing at your foolish choice. But let’s keep going.
Day 10: $5.12
Day 15: $163.84
Day 20: $5,242.88
By Day 20, we’re almost done with the experiment and we’re still nowhere near a million dollars. The person with the million is feeling extremely smug. But here’s where compound growth gets absolutely wild.
Day 25: $167,772.16
Day 28: $1,342,177.28
Day 29: $2,684,354.56
Day 30: $5,368,709.12
By day 30, that worthless penny has grown to over $5.3 million. The person who thought they were smart by taking the “guaranteed” million dollars just lost out on over $4 million. This is the power of compound interest in action. It starts slow… painfully slow. For the first couple of weeks, it looks like nothing is happening. But once it gains momentum, the growth becomes absolutely explosive.
Here’s what most people miss about the penny example, and about compound interest in general: the real power isn’t in the rate of growth, it’s in the time you give it to work.
Notice that for the first 20 days, that penny was worth less than $5,300. It wasn’t until the final 10 days that it exploded to over $5 million. The majority of the growth happened at the very end, after time had done its work.
This is why starting early is so incredibly important, and why every year you delay investing costs you far more than you realize. It’s not just about the money you could have invested that year. It’s about all the compound growth that money would have generated over the decades.
The beautiful and frustrating thing about compound interest is that its greatest power is invisible for most of the journey. Just like that penny that looked worthless for 20 days, your investments might look disappointing for years or even decades.
You might invest for five years and think, “This is it? This is the miracle everyone talks about?” You might feel like you’re not getting ahead fast enough, like you should be doing something more dramatic or risky to build wealth faster. But that’s exactly when you need to remember the penny. The magic happens at the end, after time has had a chance to work. The longer you can leave your money alone to compound, the more miraculous the results become.
This is why Ronald Read became so wealthy on a janitor’s salary. He understood that compound interest rewards patience above all else. He didn’t try to get rich quick. He didn’t chase hot stocks or try to time the market. He just fed money into his investments consistently and let time do the heavy lifting.
This is why Einstein compares compound interest to the seven ancient wonders of the world which were massive physical achievements: the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and so on. They were impressive because of their scale and the human effort required to build them. But compound interest is different. It doesn’t require massive human effort or incredible engineering. It just requires time and patience. Yet its power to transform lives is arguably greater than any ancient monument. The eighth wonder of the world is available to everyone, you just have to start.
The Shocking Truth About “Expert” Traders
Before we dive into what you should actually do with your money, let me clear up some massive misconceptions about investing. When most people think about investing, they picture day traders glued to multiple monitors with flashing red and green numbers, frantically buying and selling stocks every few minutes to chase quick profits, or someone who needs to spend hours researching obscure companies to find the next hidden gem that’s about to skyrocket.
That’s not investing, that’s gambling with a fancy rebrand.
Real investing has nothing to do with picking individual stocks, trying to time the market, or pretending you can predict what’s going to happen next week, next month, or next year. Anyone who tells you they can consistently beat the market is either lying or delusional.
Want to know the dirty secret about all those “expert” traders? Fidelity, one of the world’s largest investment companies, decided to analyze their most successful accounts to see what these top performers had in common. They expected to find patterns: maybe these investors checked their portfolios daily, had advanced degrees in finance, or used sophisticated trading strategies.
What they discovered was absolutely shocking: their most successful investors were dead.
I’m not joking. The accounts that performed the best over time belonged to people who had died and whose accounts were just sitting there, untouched. These dead investors outperformed all the active traders, all the market timers, and all the professional fund managers who thought they were smart by constantly buying and selling.
Why? Because the dead investors couldn’t panic and sell during market downturns. They couldn’t get excited and chase hot stocks. Their money just sat there, invested in the market, growing steadily over time.
This reveals the most counterintuitive truth about investing: the less you do, the better you’ll perform.
The Warren Buffett Solution
So if picking individual stocks is essentially gambling, and if the experts can’t beat the market, what should you actually do? The answer comes from someone who might surprise you.
Warren Buffett is worth over $100 billion and has been consistently crushing the market for decades.
He’s literally called the “Oracle of Omaha” because of his legendary investment track record. When this man speaks about investing, the entire financial world stops to listen. So what does the greatest investor of all time recommend for regular people like you and me?
Index funds.
Not complex trading strategies. Not hot stock tips. Not cryptocurrency or the latest investment fad. Just boring, simple index funds.
Buffett is so convinced this is the right approach that he’s put his money where his mouth is in the most personal way possible: he’s instructed his estate to put 90% of his wife’s inheritance into index funds when he dies. Think about that. The man who built a fortune by picking individual stocks is telling his own family to ignore everything he does professionally and just buy index funds.
If it’s good enough for Warren Buffett’s wife, it’s definitely good enough for us.
What Exactly Is an Index Fund?
Think of an index fund as a basket that holds hundreds or thousands of different stocks. Instead of trying to pick individual winners, you’re buying a tiny piece of everything. When you invest $1,000 in a total stock market index fund, you’re essentially buying a microscopic piece of every publicly traded company in the United States.
You instantly become a part-owner of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Tesla, and thousands of other companies. This diversification is incredibly powerful. If one company goes bankrupt, you barely notice because you own thousands of others. You’re not putting all your eggs in one basket; you’re spreading your risk across the entire market.
But here’s what makes this strategy truly powerful: you’re betting on something that has never failed in the long term.
The VTSAX Solution
So which index fund should you buy? There are hundreds of options, and this is where many people get paralyzed by choice. Let me simplify this for you: buy VTSAX (Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund).
VTSAX gives you ownership in virtually every publicly traded company in the United States. It has incredibly low fees (just 0.03% annually), it’s been around for decades with a proven track record, and it’s exactly what Warren Buffett recommends.
But here’s what makes VTSAX the gold standard that even investing communities swear by: it’s impossible to screw up. You literally cannot pick wrong companies because you own them all. When Apple has a bad quarter, Microsoft might be crushing it. When tech stocks are down, energy or healthcare might be up. You don’t have to predict which sector will win because you own every sector.
The fees are so low they’re practically nothing. While actively managed funds charge 1% or more annually, VTSAX charges just 0.03%. That means for every $10,000 you invest, you pay just $3 per year in fees. Compare that to a typical mutual fund charging $100 or more on that same investment.
And here’s the kicker: VTSAX has consistently beaten about 90% of actively managed funds over the long term. The professionals with their fancy degrees and expensive research teams can’t beat this simple, boring index fund. The best part? It requires zero skill, zero research, and zero ongoing effort. You buy it, you hold it, you get rich. That’s it.
Don’t overthink this. Don’t spend hours researching different funds or trying to find the “perfect” option. The investing community figured this out years ago: VTSAX is the answer. Just buy it, set up automatic investments, and let compound interest work its magic.
But now you need to know where to buy it… and this is where the real magic happens.
The Market Always Goes Up (Eventually)
Here’s the most important thing to understand about the stock market: over the long term, it always goes up. Always. This isn’t opinion or wishful thinking. It’s historical fact backed by over a century of data that transforms VTSAX from a gamble into one of the safest long-term investments you can make.
Yes, the market has crashes. The Great Depression wiped out 89% of stock values from 1929 to 1932. The dot-com bubble burst in 2000, erasing trillions in wealth. The 2008 financial crisis brought the global economy to its knees. The 2020 pandemic crash saw the market plummet 34% in just five weeks. Each time, the financial media proclaimed the end of capitalism as we know it. Each time, panicked investors fled to the perceived safety of cash and bonds.
And each time, they were catastrophically wrong.
Here’s what’s remarkable: every single crash in market history has been temporary. The market has always recovered and gone on to reach new highs. Always. The Great Depression recovery took years, but by 1954, stocks had not only recovered but quintupled from their 1932 lows. The dot-com crash seemed devastating, but patient investors who held through 2002 saw new highs by 2007. The 2008 financial crisis recovery came faster. New highs by 2013. The 2020 pandemic crash? The market not only recovered but soared to record levels within months.
This is why VTSAX isn’t gambling. It’s the opposite. When you buy VTSAX, you’re not betting on any single company or sector. You’re betting on the entire American economy, on human ingenuity, on the relentless march of progress and innovation. You’re betting that Americans will continue to wake up each day trying to solve problems, create value, and build businesses. That’s not a gamble. That’s the safest bet in human history.
The crashes that feel earth-shattering in the moment become mere blips when you zoom out to the market’s century-long trajectory. The 1929 crash looks like a small dip on a chart spanning decades. The 2008 crisis appears as a brief interruption in an otherwise steady climb. These temporary setbacks are the price of admission to the greatest wealth-building machine ever created.
The people who make money are the ones who stay invested through the volatility. They understand that market crashes aren’t apocalyptic events but discount sales on American business. The people who lose money are the ones who panic and sell at the bottom, exactly what those dead investors at Fidelity couldn’t do, which is why they won. They couldn’t check their accounts, couldn’t read the doom-and-gloom headlines, couldn’t make the emotional decision to sell when things looked darkest.
This is the fundamental truth that separates investing from gambling: gamblers need luck, but VTSAX investors need only patience. The house edge in Vegas never disappears, but the market’s upward bias has never failed. When you buy VTSAX and hold it for decades, you’re not gambling on short-term market movements. You’re harnessing the most reliable force in financial history: the long-term growth of American enterprise.
The market doesn’t go up in a straight line, but it goes up nonetheless. Those crashes that seem so significant? They’re just the market’s way of offering you a better price on the same incredible investment. The question isn’t whether the market will recover from the next crash. It’s whether you’ll have the wisdom to stay invested when it happens.
The Roth IRA: Your Financial Cheat Code
Now that you understand the power of index funds and the certainty of long-term market growth, let’s talk about the vehicle that will supercharge it all. If there’s one thing, and I mean ONE thing, you take away from this entire book, let it be the same advice my friend gave me at that coffee shop: open a Roth IRA, max it out every year, and you will become a millionaire.
I’m not exaggerating for effect. I’m not using hyperbole to get your attention. This is mathematical fact, and it’s available to almost every working person in America. The Roth IRA is quite literally a cheat code for building wealth, and most people are completely ignoring it.
A Roth IRA is a special type of investment account where you contribute money you’ve already paid taxes on, and then that money grows completely tax-free for the rest of your life. When you retire and start withdrawing money, you pay zero taxes on any of it, not on your original contributions, and not on any of the growth.
Let me repeat that: zero taxes on the growth. If you contribute $7,000 a year for 30 years and it grows to $1,000,000, you can withdraw all $1,000,000 in retirement without paying a penny in taxes.
This is where the simple strategy becomes unstoppable: VTSAX inside a Roth IRA.
This is why I said if you only take one thing from this book, make it this: start your Roth IRA now, max it out every year, and invest it all in VTSAX.
The strategy is that simple. The results are that powerful. And the time to start is now.
That’s exactly what I did. Remember that $500 I keep mentioning throughout this book? I put it in VTSAX inside of a Roth IRA when I was 27. When I saw it grow to $525 after six months, something clicked. I realized I had just created tax-free money that would never be touched by the government again.
That realization was so powerful that I immediately started maxing out my contributions. I rearranged my budget, cut unnecessary expenses, and found ways to contribute the maximum amount every single year. It wasn’t always easy, but it was always worth it.
Years later, watching my Roth IRA balance grow has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my financial life. Every dollar in that account represents freedom: freedom from financial worry, freedom to retire comfortably, and freedom to leave something meaningful for the next generation.
Today, that original $500 is already worth $108,000. But here’s the real kicker: if I keep maxing out the annual limit and continue getting a 10% annual return and don’t touch it, by the time I turn 65, that single investment account will be worth over $3,200,000.00.
Which is just. Ridiculous.
Time in the Market Beats Timing the Market
The most important factor in your investing success isn’t how much you contribute, what fund you choose, or when you start contributing each year. It’s simply time in the market.
You’ll hear endless chatter about “timing the market.” Financial gurus will tell you to wait for crashes, buy the dip, dollar-cost average, or use some elaborate strategy to optimize your entry points. Here’s the truth they don’t want you to know: time in the market beats timing the market, every single time.
Let me tell you about Jason and Maya. They were college roommates who started their careers at the same company in 2000, making identical salaries. Both opened Roth IRAs and committed to maxing them out every year.
Jason was convinced he could beat the system. He studied charts, read financial news religiously, and prided himself on being a sophisticated investor. He would wait for market crashes to “buy low,” then sell when he thought the market had peaked to “sell high.” He timed his way through the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and every correction in between. Jason was smart, analytical, and absolutely certain he could outsmart the market.
Maya took a different approach. She bought VTSAX on January 1st every year with her full contribution and then forgot about it. She didn’t watch the news, didn’t check her account during crashes, and didn’t try to time anything. Maya just bought, and didn’t sell. Ever.
Fast forward to 2024. Jason, despite all his sophisticated timing strategies, had accumulated about $180,000 in his Roth IRA. Not bad, but frustrating given all the effort he’d put into optimization. Maya, with her “boring” buy-and-hold strategy, had over $280,000. Same contributions, same time period, but Maya’s account was worth nearly $100,000 more because she never tried to be clever.
Time in the market beats timing the market. Every. Single. Time.
The math is brutally simple. Every day your money isn’t invested is a day it’s not growing. Every month you spend “researching the perfect strategy” is a month of compound interest you’ll never get back. Every year you wait for the “right time” to start is a year that could have doubled your money by retirement.
If you really want to optimize your Roth IRA contributions, here’s the secret: contribute the full amount on January 1st. Not throughout the year, not when you “have extra money,” but on the very first day the contribution window opens. I actually have a recurring alarm set for noon on January 1st every year to make my full contribution. Could I optimize it further and invest at 12:01 AM? Sure, but nothing kills the New Year’s Eve vibe quite like opening your brokerage app during the ball drop. And let’s be honest, these days I’m already in bed by then anyway.
But here’s what matters infinitely more than whether you invest at midnight or noon on January 1st: that you actually do it. The difference between investing at the market open versus market close on any given day is negligible. The difference between investing on January 1st versus December 31st of the same year is meaningful but not life-changing. The difference between investing this year versus next year? That’s where fortunes are made and lost.
Consider this: if you invest $7,000 on January 1st instead of spreading it throughout the year, that money gets an extra six months of growth on average. Over 30 years, assuming 7% returns, that extra six months per year adds up to tens of thousands of additional dollars. It’s not earth-shattering, but it’s free money for doing nothing more than being organized about your contributions.
Don’t have $7,000 to drop on January 1st? Do $583 a month ($7,000 divided by 12). Don’t have $583? Do $50 a month. The perfect amount to invest is whatever you can afford to invest consistently. The worst amount to invest is zero while you wait for your financial situation to improve.
But obsessing over this level of optimization misses the forest for the trees. The person who contributes $7,000 in December will vastly outperform the person who spends all year planning the “perfect” January 1st contribution and never actually makes it. The person who dollar-cost averages throughout the year will crush the market timer who’s still waiting for the next crash.
Don’t wait for the “perfect” time to start. Don’t try to time market crashes or wait for better opportunities. Don’t spend months researching the “best” strategy or reading investment forums where people debate the merits of investing on Tuesdays versus Thursdays. Just start. Open the account, make the contribution, buy the index fund, and let compound interest work its magic.
The market doesn’t care about your perfect timing. It doesn’t care if you bought at the daily high or the daily low. What it rewards, consistently and generously, is time. The earlier you start, the longer your money has to compound, and the wealthier you become. It’s not about being smart or lucky or having perfect timing. It’s about showing up consistently and letting mathematics do the heavy lifting.
The best time to start investing was 20 years ago. The second-best time is today. Not next month when you’ve saved more money. Not next year when you’ve figured out your “strategy.” Today. Your future millionaire self is waiting for you to make the decision that changes everything.
Trust me, and trust the math, on this one. Start your Roth IRA today. Your future self will thank you for the rest of your life.
How to Actually Do This
Opening a Roth IRA is incredibly simple. You can do it with literally any major brokerage firm: Vanguard, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, or dozens of others. I personally use Vanguard because they have low fees and excellent index funds, but honestly, the difference between major brokerages is minimal. Don’t spend weeks comparing fee structures that differ by fractions of a percent. Just pick one and get started.
The process takes about 10 minutes online. Seriously, that’s it. Ten minutes to set up what could be the most important financial account of your life. You’ll need your Social Security number, some basic personal information like your address and employment details, and a way to fund the account. Most brokerages let you link your checking account directly, so you can transfer money instantly.
Here’s exactly what you’ll do: go to the brokerage website, click “Open an Account,” select “Roth IRA,” fill out the basic forms, and link your bank account. The hardest part is remembering your mother’s maiden name for the security questions.
Once your account is open, you’ll have cash sitting there doing nothing until you actually invest it. This is where people often get stuck, staring at dozens of investment options and feeling overwhelmed. Don’t overthink it. Buy VTSAX (or the equivalent total stock market index fund at your brokerage). At Fidelity, it’s FZROX. At Schwab, it’s SWTSX. They’re all essentially the same thing: the entire US stock market in one fund.
After you’ve made your first purchase, set up automatic contributions. This is the secret sauce that makes the whole system work without you having to think about it. Most brokerages let you set up automatic transfers from your bank account on whatever schedule works for you. Weekly, monthly, quarterly… it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s automatic.
Here’s the setup I recommend: automatic transfer from your HYSA to your Roth IRA, then automatic purchase of VTSAX. Set it and forget it. Your money moves from your paycheck to your checking account to your HYSA to your Roth IRA to VTSAX without you having to lift a finger. It’s like having a personal wealth-building machine that runs in the background of your life.
Here’s a crucial detail that can save you thousands: you have until tax day (usually April 15th) to make contributions for the previous tax year. So if you’re reading this in March, you can still make your contribution for last year plus your contribution for this year! That’s potentially $14,000 you can invest right now instead of waiting until next January.
This tax-year flexibility is one of the most underutilized strategies in personal finance. Most people think they missed their chance if they didn’t contribute by December 31st, but the IRS gives you an extra three and a half months. If you got a tax refund, that’s perfect money to fund your previous year’s contribution. If you got a bonus at work, same thing. Don’t let this window close without taking advantage of it.
One more thing: don’t let analysis paralysis stop you from starting. I see people spend months researching the “perfect” brokerage, reading reviews, comparing expense ratios that differ by 0.01%, and agonizing over decisions that ultimately don’t matter. The difference between Vanguard and Fidelity is negligible. The difference between starting today and starting next month is significant. The difference between starting this year and starting next year could be worth tens of thousands of dollars over your lifetime.
The hardest part about opening a Roth IRA isn’t the technical process. It’s making the decision to actually do it. Stop researching, stop comparing, stop waiting for the perfect moment. Pick a brokerage, open the account, and start investing.
