Guides

Money questions almost everyone asks, answered without jargon. Each guide ends with a calculator so you can try it with your own numbers.

• How much money do I need to retire (and live off my investments)?The short answer: your yearly spending times 25. The long answer has a couple of catches worth knowing before you trust that number.
• How much do I need to save a month to reach a million?It mostly depends on one thing: how many years you give compound interest. Here are the numbers, worked out at 7% a year.
• What happens to my invested money in a market crash?It goes down, sometimes a lot. The useful question is not whether it will happen, but how much, for how long and what you do in the meantime.
• How many index funds do I need to be diversified?Fewer than you think. What matters is not how many funds you own, but how many different companies are inside them.
• What return can I expect from an index fund?A reasonable long-term average is between 7% and 9% a year before inflation. But the average is only the start of the answer.

Educational content. Not financial advice: past returns do not guarantee future ones.