Let’s be real. When you think about “investing,” you probably imagine something out of a movie. A guy in a suit yelling into a phone, charts flashing on six monitors, making a million bucks on some obscure crypto coin before lunch.
It’s exciting. It’s dramatic. It’s also complete and utter junk.
The reality of building real, lasting wealth isn’t a dramatic sprint. It’s a painfully slow, incredibly boring walk. It’s not about picking the one magical stock that will change your life. It’s about developing a habit so mundane and consistent that you eventually forget you’re even doing it.
The goal isn’t to get rich quick. The goal is to become wealthy slowly. And that starts by treating investing not as a high-stakes game, but as a habit, like brushing your teeth.
Forget the Hero Narrative
We love the story of the underdog who bets it all and wins big. We eat it up. But for every one of those stories, there are ten thousand untold stories of people who bet it all and lost. They’re not in the movies. They’re just broke.
The financial world wants you to believe it’s complicated. They use fancy terms like “alpha,” “derivatives,” and “volume-weighted average price” to make you feel stupid. Why? Because if you feel stupid, you’ll pay them to handle it for you. Or you’ll buy their course. Or you’ll just get scared and do nothing, which is somehow even worse.
Here’s the secret they don’t want you to know: building wealth is simple. Not easy, but simple.
It’s so simple that it’s offensive to our intelligence. We feel like something this important should require more from us. A secret handshake. A higher IQ. A trust fund.
It doesn’t. It requires consistency over a long period of time. That’s it. The problem is, consistency is boring. And we are wired to seek out excitement and quick hits of dopamine, not the slow, gradual reward of something that works.
The Magic is in the Habit, Not the Hail Mary
So, if the big, dramatic plays are out, what’s in?
Small. Consistent. Actions.
Think of it like getting fit. You don’t get a six-pack by doing 1,000 crunches one night and then drinking beer for the next six months. You get it by going to the gym three times a week, every week, for years. It’s the repetition that does the work.
Investing is the same. The power isn’t in a single large sum of money (though that helps). The real power is in time and consistency. It’s a concept so powerful it has a cheesy name: dollar-cost averaging.
This just means investing a fixed amount of money on a regular schedule, no matter what the market is doing. When prices are high, your money buys fewer shares. When prices are low, it buys more. Over decades, this averages out your cost and completely removes the need to “time the market,” which is a fool’s game anyway.
You’re not a prophet. You don’t know what the market will do next week. Stop pretending you do.
The habit is what matters. Setting up a system where $100, or $50, or even $25, automatically gets pulled from your checking account and thrown into a low-cost index fund every single month.
You do this when you’re excited. You do this when you’re bored. You do this when the market is crashing and it feels like you’re lighting money on fire. You do this when the market is soaring and you feel like a genius. You just… do it.
Automate it. Set it and forget it. Make it so mind-numbingly boring that you don’t have to think about it. That’s the whole point.
How to Build the Habit (Without Losing Your Mind)
Okay, so “be consistent” is great advice, but how do you actually do it when Netflix is calling and your car just needed a new transmission?
1. Start Stupidly Small. Your ego is your enemy here. It will tell you that $50 a month is pointless. “What’s that even going to do?” it’ll whine. Tell your ego to shut up. The goal isn’t the amount. The goal is the behavior. The ritual. The goal is to become “a person who invests.” Start with an amount so small you literally won’t miss it. $20. $10. The number does not matter. What matters is building the muscle memory of the habit. You can always increase it later.
2. Automate Everything. You have a limited amount of willpower. Don’t waste it on something a computer can do for free. Log into your investment account and set up an automatic transfer for the day after you get paid. Your money moves before you even see it. You can’t spend what you don’t have. It’s the core idea from my article Stop Forcing Willpower: Design Your Environment for Effortless Habits—don't rely on motivation, build a system that runs on autopilot. This is the ultimate cheat code.
3. Ignore the Noise. The financial news industry is built on panic and excitement. Their job is to make you feel like something is always happening that requires your immediate attention. It’s not. Stop checking your portfolio every day. Stop reading headlines about what the Fed is doing. For 99% of people, the best investment strategy is to be lazy. Set your automatic payments and go live your life. Check your statements once a year to make sure everything is still running. That’s it.
4. Focus on What You Can Control. You can’t control the stock market. You can’t control the economy. You can’t control global pandemics or inflation rates. So stop worrying about them. What can you control? You can control how much you save. You can control your spending. You can control learning a new skill to earn a little more. You can control setting up that automatic transfer. Pour your energy into these things. They actually matter.
The Long Game is the Only Game
This is the part where people tune out. We’re terrible at thinking in decades. We want results now.
But the universe doesn’t care about your impatience. Math doesn’t care. Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe, but it needs time. Lots of it.
That first $100 you invest feels meaningless. The $100 you invest ten years from now is building on top of a mountain of all the previous $100 payments and the growth they’ve already earned. The habit you start today is a gift you give to your future self—a self you can’t even imagine yet.
Building wealth isn’t about a single brilliant decision. It’s about a thousand mediocre ones. It’s the boring choice to invest instead of buying another round of shots. It’s the boring choice to drive your car for two more years instead of upgrading. It’s the boring choice to eat at home.
It’s a grind. But it’s a grind that works.
The alternative is to keep chasing excitement, keep looking for the shortcut, and keep being disappointed when the latest get-rich-quick scheme fizzles out, leaving you right back where you started, or worse.
So, embrace the boring. Make investing a habit. Not because it’s fun, but because it works. And in the end, having the freedom and security that comes with long-term wealth is a heck of a lot more exciting than any roller-coaster ride the stock market can ever offer.