VTI: A Quiet Millionaire, Maybe.

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Warren Buffett says you don’t need to be a genius to make money. Just… not be a fool. It’s a surprisingly low bar, really. People spend fortunes looking for the next big thing, the magic stock, the secret. So it goes. But sometimes, the most sensible thing is the simplest. Like buying everything. More or less.

There’s this fund, the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI +0.82%). It’s a mouthful, I know. It doesn’t promise fireworks. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll be sipping Mai Tais on a yacht. It just… owns a piece of almost every company in America. All 3,500-ish of them. A bit like owning a very, very small part of everything. Which, when you think about it, is kind of absurd. And beautiful.

The Thingamajig, Explained

It’s not literally everything, of course. But it’s close enough for government work. And like all things, it’s weighted. Meaning some companies get a bigger slice of the pie. Nvidia, for example. That’s a big one right now. They own a good chunk of it. About 6.6%, if you’re keeping score. The top ten companies make up a hefty 36% of the whole shebang. Which means if those tech giants stumble, the whole thing wobbles. Everything wobbles, eventually.

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Vanguard, bless their souls, keeps the costs down. A tiny 0.03% expense ratio. For every $1,000 you plunk down, they take 30 cents. It’s almost polite. It doesn’t feel like robbery, more like a small contribution to the ongoing machinery of finance. Which, let’s be honest, is probably a good thing. Probably.

A Million Bucks? Don’t Hold Your Breath.

The stock market, over the long haul, has given people about 9 or 10% a year. That’s the average, naturally. Some years are up, some are down. This VTI thing has done about 9.2% over the past 25 years. Which is… fine. It’s survived 9/11, a financial meltdown, a pandemic, and a bear market. It’s seen things. And yet, here it is. Still chugging along. A testament to the stubborn persistence of capitalism, perhaps. Or just dumb luck.

Let’s say you put in $500 a month. Just $500. And let’s pretend it keeps growing at 9.2% a year. After 15 years, you’d have around $179,000. Not bad. After 20 years, about $314,000. Getting warmer. After 32 years… over a million. A million dollars. Which, in today’s money, isn’t what it used to be. But it’s still a million. So it goes.

Past performance isn’t a promise, of course. The future is a murky, unpredictable thing. There will be setbacks. There will be disappointments. But the idea is simple: buy a little piece of everything, and then… leave it alone. Let the compounding do its work. It’s not glamorous. It’s not exciting. But sometimes, the quietest paths lead to the most unexpected places. And sometimes, they don’t. But what else are you going to do?

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2026-01-22 22:24