At the end of 2019, I bought a book on Audible for 1 credit (each credit costs me $14.95 in my Audible subscription plan). The book was called A Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins. I listened to it on my annual Personal Offsite as I took time to reflect on the past year and to get energized for the year (and years) ahead.
The simple takeaway from this book reinforced what I was already doing: buying Vanguard index funds. However, JL narrowed it down even further. He famously suggested one specific index fund – VTSAX (Vanguard Total US Stock Market Index). His recommendation was a bit more nuanced than this and he suggested some other index funds as bubble wrap around this anchor tenant of a portfolio, but he made a solid argument for this financial product (it provides exposure beyond the US because US companies do a lot of business internationally; it is self cleansing, which means underperforming stocks naturally come out of the index and get replaced by new better performing stocks; etc.).
To make the long story short, three months after finishing the book, I started to follow the simple and crystal clear advice of dripping cash into VTSAX. As of this writing, after about five years of dollar cost averaging into this index fund, my paper gain is substantial and enough to buy me and my family a few years of memorable vacations (a double digit annual return in terms of %). Of course, that has a lot to do with the fact that the US stock market has performed well over that time (3/2020 to 7/2025), despite the pandemic. However, had I not listened to the book, I would not have done this. Of course, until I sell this fund, the gain is just on paper, but I will let it compound for a while longer. It is a very diversified fund, with ~3.5K US public companies in the index. By the way, the ETF version of this fund on Vanguard is VTI. VTI is basically the same thing as VTSAX and has some additional advantages like higher liquidity.
As with everything, this is not financial advice. VTSAX could easily go down 50% as the market has done a few times in the past. It is also not an endorsement of doing whatever one reads in a book. What I am hoping this illustrates is that books can hold extremely valuable ideas that can be super powerful when met with action. So, keep on reading and keep on investing.
A bonus action I took as a result of reading that book is starting this blog (JL started a blog before writing his first book: http://www.jlcollinsnh.com). Thanks, JL.
A Guide to Personal Finance for My Kids or Yours 