Build an Investment Portfolio You Can Stick With

A fund's return and its owner's return are two different numbers. Over the ten years to the end of 2023, American funds returned 7.3 percent a year and the people who held them earned 6.3.

That gap is made by the dates money enters and leaves, and it is wider in the holdings that move the most. The fix is not a better fund. It is a mix you chose on purpose, held across every account you own, with a reset date in the calendar and a written page that tells your future self what to do on the morning the headlines are red.

This course builds that. You work out what share belongs in stocks from three separate questions, split the rest across three index funds that between them hold about twenty-four thousand securities, place the bonds where their interest is not taxed as ordinary income, and set the yearly chore that puts the percentages back. Then you practise the hard part on a real four-year stretch, including the year both stocks and bonds fell.

You walk away with a target mix you can defend, the three funds that implement it, the accounts each one sits in, a rebalancing date and band, and a one-page investment policy written on a calm day.

The course is written for the United States: dollar figures, 401(k) and IRA accounts, and 2026 federal tax figures. It is general education, not advice about your own money.

Who it's for

New investors: want one portfolio they understand instead of a pile of tips they second-guess.

Panic sellers: keep leaving at the bottom and need a rule that holds when their nerve does not.

Busy professionals: want a set-and-reset system that runs on one calendar reminder a year.