Read Ian’s comments in a recent U.S. News & World Report article that looks at what we can learn from the way Millennials invest…
Millennials know to start saving early.
The best thing you can do for your investments is start early. “Through compounding and time, investors can grow their wealth by saving and investing early and consistently,” says Ian Post, principal at Fifth Set Investment Advisors. Those early years are critical: A person who invests $200 per month only from age 25 to age 35 could retire with more money than someone who invests $200 per month every year from age 35 to age 65, assuming they earned the same rate of return. “Millennials have bought into the idea of the importance of saving early,” Post says. Hopefully future generations will follow their example.
They pay attention to investment cost.
“In the past, the idea that investors needed a high-paid, well-connected portfolio manager to find ‘undervalued’ or ‘mispriced’ securities was accepted wisdom,” Post says. “Over time, however, evidence emerged that very few active managers outperformed their benchmarks.” Millennials have been “following the evidence” and investing their dollars into low-cost passive index funds instead of active ones. In 2018, $174 billion flowed out of active U.S. equity funds while nearly $207 billion went into passive U.S. equity funds, according to Morningstar.