Don't try to time the market.
Any money you spend that does not make you happier is wasted.* (* Research shows this ends up being most of our money). [Source @ 9:39]β
Once-in-a-century events happen all the time because lots of unrelated things could go wrong. If, in any given year, thereβs a 1% chance of a new disastrous pandemic, a 1% chance of a crippling depression, a 1% chance of a catastrophic flood, a 1% chance of political collapse, and on and on, then the odds that something bad will happen next year β or any year β are β¦ pretty good. Itβs why Arnold Toynbee says history is βjust one damn thing after another.β [Source]β
"Spend extravagantly on things you love, and cut mercilessly on things you donβt." - Ramit Sethi
That $1 invested in 1950 would grow to $17 by the end of 1972 and subsequently drop to $10 by the fall of 1974. From there it would grow to $95 by the fall of 1987, only to drop to $62 over the course of a single week because of the Black Monday crash. That $62 would have turned into an unbelievable $604 by the spring of 2000. By the fall of 2002 that $604 would have been down to just $340. After slowly working its way all the way to $708 by the fall of 2007, over the next year-and-a-half it would be cut in half down to $347 by March 2009. By the end of December 2009 that initial $1 was worth $537, which is less than the $590 it was worth a decade earlier by the end of 1999. [Source]β