Investing in stocks played a huge role in helping my wife and me reach a $1 million net worth before we turned 40. Our plan was not about finding the next hot stock or somehow knowing when to buy and sell at the perfect time.
We something much simpler, and much less exciting. We followed five steps, over and over, for years, without ever needing to become stock market experts or spend hours a day watching charts. There was no single breakthrough moment. It was a boring, repeatable process that slowly turned into real money over time.
One quick note before we start: investment returns are never guaranteed, and our experience isn’t a promise that you’ll see similar results. Markets can go up, and they can go down, sometimes sharply, and past performance doesn’t predict what will happen next.
1. We Started Small
We didn’t wait until we had a big pile of cash to begin investing. We started with an amount that felt comfortable, even if it wasn’t very much, and increased it as time went on.
The real goal at first wasn’t to get rich fast. It was to build the habit and get comfortable with the process of investing. This mattered more than most people realize. Starting small also meant we weren’t taking a huge financial risk while we were still learning how everything worked.
This is easier today than it used to be. Many brokerages now let you invest in a stock or ETF using a dollar amount instead of buying a full share, through something called fractional shares. As the SEC’s Office of Investor Education explains, fractional shares let you invest even when you don’t have enough money to buy one whole share of a stock. That meant we didn’t need hundreds of dollars sitting around just to get started.
Looking back, the exact dollar amount we started with mattered far less than actually starting. It would have been easy to keep waiting until we felt more “ready” or had more saved up. Instead, we treated that first small investment as practice. We wanted to get used to seeing our account balance move up and down, understand how buying and selling actually worked, and build the confidence to keep going. Once that habit felt normal, increasing the amount we invested each month felt like a natural next step instead of a scary leap.
2. We Picked a Commission-Free, Reputable Trading Platform
When we first started investing, we wanted a brokerage that was reputable, easy to use, and didn’t charge commissions on our stock and ETF trades. We ultimately chose Ally Invest, which has been our trading platform of choice.
Ally Invest currently offers $0 commissions on eligible U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs, with no account minimum for self-directed trading.
Robinhood is another popular choice, particularly for beginners, and currently offers commission-free trading for stocks and ETFs. WellsTrade is another established option and currently offers $0 online stock and ETF trades with a $0 minimum to open an account.
Our platforms of choice:
- Ally Invest — Our primary brokerage; $0 commissions on eligible U.S. stocks and ETFs.
- Robinhood — A beginner-friendly alternative with commission-free stock and ETF trading.
- WellsTrade — An established brokerage offering $0 online stock and ETF trades.
This is actually a pretty recent shift in the investing world. Commission-free trading became the industry standard after major brokerage firms eliminated trading fees on stocks and ETFs in 2019, which was a big change from the days when every single trade cost several dollars in fees. That shift made it far easier for regular investors like us to invest small amounts often.
3. We Invested in S&P 500 ETF Funds
Instead of trying to guess which individual stocks would outperform the market, we chose ETFs that track the S&P 500. This gave us exposure to hundreds of large U.S. companies through a single investment, all in one purchase.
We picked this approach because simplicity mattered more to us than constantly hunting for the next winning stock. Trying to pick individual winners sounds exciting, but it’s genuinely hard to do well, even for professionals. S&P Global’s own research found that a large majority of actively managed large-cap fund managers failed to beat the S&P 500 over the past year, and that gap tends to grow even wider the longer you measure it. If professional fund managers struggle to beat a simple index fund, we didn’t feel the need to try either.
Here our some of our favorite low cost S&P 500 ETFs, including expense ratio, dividend yield, and 5-year average annual return. Some of these funds we personally hold in our portfolio.
| ETF | What It Tracks | Expense Ratio | Dividend Yield | 5-Year Avg. Annual Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VOO | S&P 500 | 0.03% | ~1.1% | ~14% |
| IVV | S&P 500 | 0.03% | ~1.1% | ~14% |
| SPLG | S&P 500 | 0.02% | ~1.1% | ~14% |
| SPY | S&P 500 | 0.09% | ~1.0% | ~14% |
| SCHD | Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 | 0.06% | ~3.0% | ~9.5% |
| SPYD | S&P 500 High Dividend Index | 0.07% | ~4.1% | ~9.5% |
| VYM | FTSE High Dividend Yield Index | 0.06% | ~2.3% | ~11.5% |
Figures above are approximate, based on recent data as of this writing. Dividend yields and returns shift daily with the market. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.
4. We Contributed Consistently and Reinvested Dividends
We kept adding money to our investments no matter what the market was doing. When stocks were up, we invested. When stocks were down, we still invested. When our income grew, we increased how much we were contributing.
We also made sure to reinvest the dividends our investments paid out, rather than pulling that money out as cash. Over the years, this turned out to be one of the most important habits in the entire process. Hartford Funds’ research on the S&P 500 found that going back to 1960, roughly 85% of the index’s cumulative total return can be attributed to reinvested dividends and the power of compounding. In other words, a huge share of long-term stock market growth doesn’t come from dramatic price jumps. It comes quietly, from dividends being reinvested again and again over time.
The biggest thing that made this work was consistency. We weren’t trying to perfectly time when to put money in or pull it out. We just kept showing up with new contributions, month after month, year after year.
To put the dividend piece into perspective: imagine two identical $10,000 investments in an S&P 500 fund. One investor spends every dividend the moment it’s paid out, treating it like extra spending money. The other lets those dividends automatically buy more shares.
Fast forward 30 years, and that one difference adds up. At around 8% annual price growth alone, the dividend-spender ends up with roughly $100,000. The dividend-investor ends up with roughly $175,000, about $75,000 more, without contributing an extra dollar. Both owned the exact same fund. The only difference was what happened to the cash it was already producing.
5. We Monitored Performance and Made Adjustments Occasionally
We didn’t constantly buy and sell based on what the market did that week or even that month. Instead, we periodically checked in on our portfolio to see how our investments were doing and whether our overall strategy still made sense for where we were in life.
When our financial situation or goals changed, like a new job, a growing family, or getting closer to a specific savings goal, we made thoughtful adjustments. For us, that mostly meant occasionally rebalancing so one part of our portfolio didn’t grow so large it threw off our overall comfort with risk, and gradually shifting a small portion of new contributions into other investments.
We also revisited how much risk felt right for us at different life stages, since what felt comfortable in our 20s wasn’t necessarily what we wanted once more of our net worth was on the line. But the goal was never to trade constantly. It was to make deliberate changes only when something in our life or our plan actually called for it.
Looking back, almost every adjustment we made came from a change in our own life, not a change in the market. The market’s ups and downs were rarely, if ever, the reason we touched our portfolio. That distinction ended up being one of the most useful lessons from the whole process.
This restraint mattered more than we expected. Jumping in and out of the market based on fear or excitement is one of the easiest ways to hurt your own returns. Research on the S&P 500 found that an investor who stayed fully invested from 2005 through 2024 would have grown a $10,000 investment to $71,750, but missing just the market’s 10 best days over that same period would have cut that final balance down to $32,871. The tricky part is that many of the market’s best days show up right after its worst ones, so trying to sidestep a downturn often means missing the recovery too.
Start Small, Stay Consistent, Let Time Work
You don’t need to start with a large amount of money. You don’t need to correctly predict which stock is going to outperform the market. You don’t need a complicated portfolio full of things you don’t fully understand.
What actually worked for us was much simpler: starting small, choosing a straightforward and low-cost investment approach, contributing consistently, reinvesting what our investments earned, and making adjustments only when they were truly needed. On their own, none of these steps felt dramatic. But combined with time, consistent investing and increasing our contributions became one of the most powerful parts of how we built our net worth.
