Expert Advice

The Biggest Investor Mistakes

What are the biggest mistakes you can make when it comes to retirement investing? Investment Committee member Jay Vivian tells you the common traps that everyday savers fall in, and how to avoid them.

Jay Vivian: A lot of people ask, “What are the couple of biggest mistakes that retirement investors make?” And there’s a lot of answers to that, because there’s a lot of different mistakes that people can make. Probably the single biggest one is that people don’t save enough. You’ve got to save more than you think you do, almost always.

People don’t start early enough. People pay too much in fees. People buy and sell stuff when they shouldn’t buy and sell because buy and selling — first of all, it’s expensive to buy and sell and, second of all, human nature often has you buy and sell at the wrong times. So there’s a lot of different ways that you can screw up. So save a lot. Start saving early. Use index funds to hold your costs down. And don’t buy and sell a lot.