Most of us would love to have $10 million stashed away when we retire. Yet most of us will never get there. In fact, most of us will get nowhere close. But that doesn’t mean attaining a $10 million nest egg is out of the question. You’ll have to remain incredibly disciplined, but if you follow the investing tricks below, you’ll only need one exchange-traded fund (ETF) to get you to that magic mark.
Before we jump into where you should invest your money, it’s critical that we cover how you should be investing your money. After all, this is the real secret behind acquiring massive long-term wealth.
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Perhaps the greatest trick of all time for building wealth is recurring investments. Instead of spending the next few minutes researching which stocks or ETFs you want to buy, take a moment to activate automated investing in your online brokerage account. The long-term results will be tremendous.
Recurring investments simply mean that your brokerage account is automatically investing a set amount of money per month for you, without you needing to lift a finger. For example, your brokerage account can withdraw $500 from your savings account on the first of each month, investing the proceeds into an ETF that tracks the S&P 500. While choosing good investment vehicles is important, putting more money to work on a regular basis is equally important. This not only ensures regular saving, but also helps you dollar-cost average, locking in attractive entry points for new deposits.
Let’s say you start with exactly zero dollars. If you invest $500 automatically per month and earn the long-term market average of roughly 10%, you’ll wind up with a $10 million portfolio in less than 53 years. That means a recent high school graduate who employs this investment method will be worth $10 million at age 71. Not bad!
If you want to get to $10 million faster, there are a few things you can do. First, start with more than zero dollars. Second, invest more than $500 per month. Third, earn more than 10% per year. But regardless of which lever you try to play with, automated investments is a must-have for investors looking to reach the $10 million mark.
This leaves only one question: Where should your automated investments be invested?
If you’re ready to start saving, the only ETF you’ll ever need is the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO). That’s because over many decades, this ETF has produced average returns of more than 10%. And because it’s a Vanguard fund, its expense ratio is just 0.03% — nearly as low as it gets!
