Getting Started
Lump sum or drip feed, and what the evidence says
Investing all at once has usually beaten spreading it out. Doing so is also harder, and that matters.
Getting Started
Accounts, first contributions and the decisions that only need making once.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 1 of 2
Getting Started
The decisions that only need making once
Most of investing is a handful of choices made at the start and then left alone. The rest is maintenance.
More in Getting Started
Getting Started
The annual review that takes twenty minutes
A long-term portfolio needs maintenance, not management. Here is the whole list.
Getting Started
Waiting until you understand everything is a decision too
Delay feels like caution because it produces nothing visible. It is still a position, and it is one nobody chose deliberately.
Getting Started
The first year is about the habit, not the return
Twelve months of performance tells you almost nothing about your strategy and quite a lot about whether you will stick to it.
Getting Started
The one page to write before your first contribution
A written plan is not paperwork. It is a message from the calm version of you to the version who will read it during a crash.
Getting Started
Choose the allocation you can hold, not the one that optimises
A theoretically superior portfolio that gets abandoned in a bad year performs worse than a cautious one that survives it.
Getting Started
Fear of buying at the top, and what the fear costs
Almost everyone starting out worries about investing the day before a crash. The worry is reasonable; acting on it usually is not.
Getting Started
Why more research stops helping surprisingly early
Beyond a modest amount of homework, additional information mostly increases confidence rather than accuracy.
Getting Started
Your first market fall is the real induction
Everything you believe about your tolerance for loss is a hypothesis until a decline tests it with your own money.
Getting Started
Automating the decision you are worst at making
A monthly contribution that requires a monthly decision is a monthly opportunity to skip it, and skips cluster in exactly the wrong…
Getting Started
The starting amount matters less than the standing order
Waiting for a respectable sum to begin with is a common and expensive form of delay.