Invest like they vote in Chicago- early and often. Any reasonable investing plan is likely to reach your reasonable financial goals if it is adequately funded. Remember when investing that you are not competing against other investors or against benchmarks such as the S&P 500. You are competing against your goals and reaching them while taking the least possible amount of risk should be your goal. That said, unless you are willing to save more than 50% of your gross income, you will need to take on significant risk with your investments. That means most of your portfolio needs to be invested in riskier assets with a higher expected return such as stocks and real estate. You need your portfolio to not only keep up with inflation (historically about 3% a year) but to beat it. Reducing the tax drag on your investments is also important and can be best done by maximizing the use of tax-protected retirement accounts. Fees also cause a significant drag on your investment return, so minimize them whenever possible. The best place to begin investing is with broadly diversified, low-cost index funds inside of tax-protected accounts such as 401(k)s and Roth IRAs. Most physicians who do nothing more than max out their available retirement accounts and invest the assets in index funds will retire as multi-millionaires.
