SLTs
Simple Long-Terms: plain index funds for investing over many years. No leverage, low yearly fees, and hundreds or thousands of companies in a single purchase.
Read this first
Nothing here is guaranteed, and past results don’t promise future ones.
How long-term investing works
Time does the heavy lifting
Money that grows also grows on what it has already gained. That’s why starting early matters more than starting big: each fund’s “$100 a month” figure shows what steady monthly buying looked like since 2017.
Spread out, not concentrated
A fund holding 500 or 3,500 companies barely notices one company’s collapse. A fund holding 7 depends on each of them, which is why concentrated funds sit in their own group below the rules.
Fees add up
Over 40 years, paying 1% a year instead of 0.03% leaves you with roughly 30% less money, whatever the market does. Every fund that meets the rules charges 0.20% a year or less.
Drops are normal
Big falls happen every several years. What has mattered most is not selling in a panic: past recoveries took months in some cases and years in others, as the table below shows.
Big drops in the S&P 500, and how long the way back took
| When | Fall from its high | Back at the old high | From the high to back |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000–2002 (dot-com crash) | −49% | May 2007 | about 7 years |
| 2007–2009 (financial crisis) | −57% | March 2013 | about 5½ years |
| 2020 (pandemic) | −34% | August 2020 | about 6 months |
| 2022 (inflation and rising rates) | −25% | January 2024 | about 2 years |
The S&P 500’s price, before dividends. Other markets have taken far longer: Japan’s Nikkei 225 took 34 years (1989 to 2024) to get back to its high.
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