Plunking money into the stock market is a weird psychological trick.  No matter how much evidence is out there, about ‘time in the market’ being valuable, there’s a bit of fear putting a bit in — even for myself who’s well studied the market extensively. Nobody wants to loose money. Nobody wants to see the value of their investment go down.  How would you feel if you’re portfolio lost 10%?  What if it were 50% as we seen in 08/09?  It would hurt.  And that’s why investors block exists.  No one wants the pain.  No

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Back in August of 2009, the show Shark Tank debuted and suddenly everyone became an armchair venture capitalist. The idea of investing some money in a brilliant idea, with some determined founders, earning huge returns captivated the attention of anyone with half a business hubris. And now 8 years since the first investments were made, we can easily see the positive results and success each investor is having. But Silicon valley caught on too and everyone with a checkbook is a venture capitalist and the cash is flowing freely. Goldman sachs reports a record 121

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When I had that talk with my sister about “so how much money do you have sitting in the bank? – You need to invest!”, I ultimately pointed her to Betterment.  At the most basic level Betterment aims to get you simple, do nothing, stock market returns – adjusted for your level of risk and time horizon.  With Betterment you buy (according your goals), do nothing except keep investing, and check back in many years to see how much you have (aka buy & hold).  Some of you might be a bit shocked by that

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