I did an interview with personal finance site mint.com last December about investing: Expert Interview with Harry Sit on Investing for Mint. They told me it had the highest pageviews among all interviews in that round. Thank you for that.
They invited me for a second interview. This time the questions were more about retirement.
If my secret strategy seems too obvious, I just don’t know a better way. Please let me know what you think. Thank you as always.
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KD says
Excellent interview. Easy to understand your advise. I like the part about ease of execution too. How important is it to be successful at all the three all the time? Successful investing using low-cost index funds can be done hundred 100% of the time. Saving a large portion of the income? I would say some years are better than others simply because life happens and some capital expenses pop up time to time. Earn more? I would agree with you that this is the hardest, esp. for someone risk averse like me. Yet still, I have had couple of years in there that were extremely good and few others where the growth was subpar. To say the least, I struggle a lot with this. All my working career we have been overcoming the Great Recession, so I do not know what is supposed to be a good year. I am also learning that I need to get myself in a place of strategic opportunity – “a job that offers more opportunity for achievement at a higher risk, higher growth company” as you said. I am tired of being part of a stay afloat mode of operation.
Harry Sit says
I don’t think it’s super-critical that you must have all three going at all times. Obviously the sooner the better. I didn’t invest in index funds at the beginning. I still did OK when I switched early enough. Our income was a lot lower at the beginning. If it only tracked inflation I don’t think we would be where we are today even if we saved like mad. When your income goes up, your savings rate also goes up and the absolute amount saved goes up even more. The extra income after taxes pretty much drops right into investments.
Meg says
I really like the way you broke down your three-pronged approach: good income, good savings rate, good investments. All three are important to building wealth, but it seems to me that many people want to focus on only one of the three. Some want to make more money but barely save and sloppily invest; others focus on frugality even to the extreme without trying as hard to boost income or invest well; and still others obsess about nuances of asset allocation and investment performance even as they live large with big unnecessary expenses.
Usually whatever leg of the stool you don’t want to talk/read/think about is the one you’d do well to give some extra attention!
🙂
Mylky says
Amen!
Dan says
These interviews now redirect to CreditKarma. Is there still a place to watch the interviews?
Harry Sit says
I updated the links to the archive from the Wayback Machine.