The “godfather of financial independence” says that young people should do two things to build wealth – and it’s nothing “silly” like buying a house

Minhaj, who became famous as a correspondent on “The Daily Show” and later welcomed the “Patriot Act” winning of the Emmy de Netflix, interviewed Collins in June about his successful book, “The Simple Path To Wealth”. The book, which has sold more than a million copies out of 20 languages, came out of the unsuccessful attempts of Collins to teach her daughter money when she was young. Collins has spent decades in the edition of B2B magazines, but has invested in the stock market everything that has been – for over 50 years. He also worked as an investment agent in an international investment research company, analysis marketing of institutional investors.

The community of financial independence adopted Collins as a pioneer, with its launch as a blog in 2011 after starting to write letters to her daughter about the investment concepts that she initially shown little interest to hear. His simple approach and his real world experience have earned him recognition as a fundamental figure in the Fire movement (financial independence, retirement early).

The two simple collins strategies to build the richness

During his interview with Minhaj, Collins underlined his basic advice for the younger generations: “VTSAX and Rent” – a philosophy that he says that he is shared with his own daughter, who is now at the beginning of thirty. VTSAX, or admiral shares of the Vanguard Total Index stock market fund, provides a large exposure to the entire American stock market with an extremely low expenditure ratio of only 0.04%.

The fund, which contains more than $ 1.9 billion in assets, follows approximately 100% of the US stock market investable in large, medium, small and micro-cap stocks. With a current yield of 1.16% and a dimension of five stars Morningstar, VTSAX provided solid yields for long -term investors. Collins maintains that this single fund offers sufficient diversification for most investors while avoiding complexity and higher costs associated with actively managed funds.

His second recommendation – instead of buying – retains conventional wisdom about ownership. Collins told Minhaj that her daughter had managed to avoid becoming “poor at home” by choosing to rent, which allowed her to make daring career decisions. She recently left her business job, after having accumulated what Collins calls “F – K You Money” – but a financial cushion to make career changes without depending on a pay check.

Collins stresses that although home ownership can offer life -style benefits such as stability or space for children, it should not be considered as a wealth creation strategy. “If your key goal is to build wealth, then having a house will not contribute,” he said in the interview. Instead, he supervises real estate purchases as lifestyle rather than financial investments.

This perspective aligns with his broader philosophy which emerged to look at his father to lose his ability to gain income during the childhood of Collins – an experience which motivated him to ensure that investments could possibly replace employment income. Collins began to save 50% of his income from his first professional work by paying $ 10,000 per year in 1974, a practice he maintained throughout his career.

For the millennials faced with economic challenges, in particular the debt of students, housing costs and uncertain employment prospects, collins advice offer a path to follow directly: investing coherently in the low -cost index funds while avoiding the financial burden of property to property until the objectives of accumulation of wealth are achieved. As he demonstrated both by his own experience and the success of his daughter, this approach can provide financial freedom to make career and life choices based on personal accomplishment rather than on economic necessity.

You can look at the complete conversation between Hasan Minhaj and JL Collins below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V360ayGov7a

For this story, Fortune Used a generative AI to help an initial project. An editor checked the accuracy of the information before the publication.

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