Haha… you had me at master spreadsheet ;)

you’re not alone. I don’t look at share prices, either—what’s more, I even disabled the automatic display of the total portfolio value in my online banking and thus stopped closely tracking my net worth. I wholeheartedly agree with the four points you made (invest when the money is there/never try to time the market/a good investment is a good investment/daily fluctuations don’t matter in the long run).

When I have money to invest, I look up the share price to find out how many shares I can afford given the current price and my amount to be invested, place the order, and that’s that. Then I write the data (date/price/number of shares) on a piece of paper, put in in an envelope safely tucked away, and retrieve the envelope with all my manual records once a year to update my master excelsheet.

Even without the exact net worth number, I know that I’m still years from retiring. But then again I’m only invested in plain old boring low-fee ETFs and perfectly happy with that. Why should I bother now with the details?

That’s an excellent hurdle to not have to deal with… And I swear more people would invest if they knew there were places where transaction costs are waived :(

I really don’t try to time the market either. Like you say, my 401(k) is completely automated and I try not to look at it very often. Maybe once a month I will login to my 401(k) account (primarily for entertainment purposes) but I don’t plan on making an changes anytime soon.

I do have a regular brokerage account too. I use one of the commission-free brokerages now which makes it easy to dollar cost average into individual stocks. I buy 3-5 shares at a time without worrying too much about the price.

I hear that..

See if one of these articles might help you?!

https://jlcollinsnh.com/2014/11/12/stocks-part-xxvii-why-i-dont-like-dollar-cost-averaging/
https://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/22/stocks-part-xviii-investing-in-a-raging-bull/

My personal opinion is to use the money however you’re already using your own money in terms of strategy/goals/etc. It’s a larger number than normal but your goals have probably remained the same, yeah? I’d also just sit on the money for a while too and let it all sink in which usually helps calm the nerves a bit as well :)

YES!!! And that *dead people* often have the best returns too because they’re not looking or taking action, obviously! Always fascinating to see, haha…

https://twocents.lifehacker.com/the-best-investors-literally-forget-about-their-portfol-1782581085

Yup, emotions def. play a large role in this stuff! Sometimes for the better, but other times not so much :)

Haha, true that…