The Unborn Deserved My Diligence

The advice I gave a young coworker after learning the same lesson the hard way.

I began investing in my own retirement too late. I never intended to retire and still do not. Because of that misconception, I failed to sign up for a 401K that matched my contributions generously for nearly half a decade. In doing so, I delayed the most valuable period of long-term investing. The earliest years matter most because they have the longest time to compound. By retirement age, those first contributions have often done more work than any others.

I will never forget being asked to go pick up the pizza for a company pizza party.

It was an odd request. Had I suggested that two people leave their jobs to go get pizza, the response would likely have been that there was no reason to pull two people off production, especially when the entire shift was going to shut down once the food arrived anyway.

The request felt strange, but I did not dare refuse it.

My supervisor was a man I called Uncle. He was a behemoth Irishman, and his expectations were clear. If he asked you to do something, your answer was yes unless you were seriously unwell.

So I agreed, and we drove the four miles together.

I knew there was a conversation coming. I spent the drive wondering what I had done to deserve it.

Without getting into the details, the conversation was cold and calculated. I would be lying if I said it did not hurt to hear.

His point was simple.

I was living in a man’s body, and it was overdue that I started behaving like one.

That conversation changed my benefit plan and my behavior. I began contributing every percentage point my employer was willing to match. At the time, I had no children, but I figured it was their money anyway.

The unborn deserved my diligence.

Fast forward a decade and a half.

I found myself giving a version of that same conversation to a young woman on the shop floor. Twenty-three years old and already two years behind on potential retirement contributions.

Looking back, neither conversation was really about retirement.

I didn’t think much about investing until I realized I wasn’t planning only for myself anymore.

Fifteen years disappear faster than you think.

After putting it together for her, I figured I might as well publish it.

If any of this sounds familiar, what follows is what I sent her.

I’m not a financial advisor. These are simply the places I’d be putting my own money into if I were twenty-three again and had decades to let compounding do its work.

My logic is simple. I ask whether the world is likely to need more or less of something twenty years from now. Then I would set weekly buys accordingly and leave them alone.

Most people do not have an investing vision problem.

They just touch it far too often.

These are the same five positions I shared with her.

$MSFT

Do you believe the world will continue to need documents, spreadsheets, presentations, email, and similar tools?

Google is an alternative, but corporations typically stick with Microsoft. That is even more true in regulated industries, where the cost of mitigating security risks on other systems is too high and the risk is too great.

$WM

Do you generate trash? Do you believe people will continue to be wasteful and need that trash managed?

It is a boring investment. People produce trash every day, and someone must manage it. Look no further than what Warren Buffett invests in these days.

$WMT

Where do you shop, where do families shop, groceries, common household items, etc.?

Similar thesis to Waste Management. People still need groceries, socks, toilet paper, and detergent whether the economy is booming or struggling.

$BTC

Do you think that printing or borrowing money endlessly is a good idea, would you prefer to hold a harder form of money?

As of today, there are over 56 million millionaires, they could not each own one bitcoin, there will only ever be 21 million whole bitcoin, that is a hard cap. Bitcoin is divisible almost infinitely. The smallest unit is called Satoshi, which is 1 hundred-millionth of a single bitcoin, stack Satoshis to save yourself from the fiat freefall.

$NVDA

Do you believe the world will continue to need more computing power?

Nvidia sells spoons stirring the AI gold rush. If Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, governments, hospitals, factories, and research labs all need more compute, Nvidia will likely remain one of the main companies they have to buy from. It increases your AI exposure beyond Microsoft while reducing the risk of betting on only one winner.