In one of Mr. Beast’s videos where he gave away a million dollars he took the winner to an electronics stores and loaded up carts with TVs, gaming systems, etc. And then Mr. Beast said something along the lines of “we’re not gonna waste it all, we’re gonna invest in some sensible things like cars and a house”.

And I yelled at the screen, “THOSE AREN’T INVESTMENTS!!!”

This image demonstrates that. Looking at the rates of return over the last 40 years we can see the MASSIVE difference between buying something that depreciates (like a car) vs merely keeping pace with inflation (like a house) vs actually building wealth (like an index fund).

To pre-respond to all the comments I’m about to get:

• “But you can’t live in nor drive an index fund!!!”: Yeah I know. The message is to minimize those costs to focus your investing dollars elsewhere.
• “11% return is crap, I know a guy who can get 80%/week day trading crypto”. That’s neat, but at that rate it would take less than 7 months to turn $10K into more than Jeff Bezos has. Is the guy you know a billionaire? Reflect on that.
• “11% return is unrealistic. No way the market returns that!”: Hey, that last guy thought it was too low! But it’s the actual return for the last 40 years!

As always, reminding you to build wealth by following the two PFC rules: 1.) Live below your means and 2.) Invest early and often.

-Jeremy