🧮 Interactive Calculator $100 a month at 10% for 30 years becomes $226,049. You put in $36,000. The market adds $190,049. That’s not a typo — it’s compound interest doing exactly what it does when you give it time and consistency. This compound interest calculator monthly lets you plug in your own numbers and see … Read more
🧮 Interactive Calculator $10,000 in SCHD with dividends reinvested could grow to over $152,000 in 25 years. Without reinvestment? About $103,000. That $49,000 gap came from a single checkbox — the one that says “reinvest dividends.” This SCHD dividend reinvestment calculator lets you plug in your own numbers and see exactly what DRIP does over … Read more
$10,000 in VOO ten years ago grew to $39,718. That same $10,000 in VUG? $49,944. A $10,227 gap — from two Vanguard funds that share 9 of the same top 10 stocks. The VOO vs VUG comparison comes down to one thing: how much you’re betting on growth. VUG holds the same mega-cap names as … Read more
$10,000 in QQQ a decade ago turned into $59,128. The same $10,000 in VGT? $76,417. That’s a $17,289 gap — and it came from two funds that share four of their top five holdings. Both are branded as tech ETFs. Both hold Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Broadcom at the top. But the QQQ vs VGT … Read more
A 30-year-old with $94,000 invested today — and zero additional contributions — would reach $1 million by age 65. No 401(k) match needed. No aggressive savings rate. No side hustles. Just compound growth doing what it does over 35 years. That’s coast FIRE in one sentence. Most people hear “financial independence” and picture decades of … Read more
An index fund and an ETF can hold the exact same 500 stocks, charge nearly the same fee, and deliver nearly identical returns. VOO and VFIAX both track the S&P 500 — one costs 0.03%, the other 0.04%. Performance over the past decade? Within 0.01% of each other annually. So the index fund vs ETF … Read more
The 4% rule has survived three decades, two market crashes, and a pandemic. It hasn’t survived 2026. William Bengen, the financial planner who created the rule in 1994, just raised his own number to 4.7%. Morningstar’s 2026 research says the safe rate is actually 3.9%. That’s a 20% disagreement between two of the most cited … Read more
A 0.03% expense ratio and a 1.00% annual fee sound almost identical. The difference is less than a single percentage point. Most investors glance at it and move on. That’s a $49,000 mistake. On a single $10,000 investment left untouched for 30 years, the fund charging 1.00% costs you $49,000 more than the one charging … Read more
You opened a brokerage account. Maybe you even funded it. Now you’re staring at a search bar with 3,000+ ETFs and no idea where to start. This is where most new investors stall. Not because investing is hard — but because the options are overwhelming. So here’s the shortcut: you don’t need 3,000 ETFs. You … Read more
What Is VXUS? Every stock market outside the U.S. — 8,700 companiesacross 47 countries in a single ETF. $558B+ in assets · 0.05% fee · ~2.9% yield · Quarterly dividends Over the past decade, $10,000 in the VXUS ETF grew to $22,706. That same $10,000 in VTI — its domestic counterpart — turned into $37,899. … Read more
