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Invest Insights explains how investing works for US individual investors, in plain language and with every rule cited to its official source. These guides are general education, not advice: they explain how things work so you can ask better questions and read the documents yourself. Read our full disclaimer first.
If you haven’t yet built a cash safety net, MoneyMaster’s guide to an emergency fund covers what many people put in place before investing.
1. What you’d actually own
- Stocks, Bonds and Cash: The Three Building Blocks
- Index Funds and ETFs Explained: What You Actually Own
- Total-Market, S&P 500 or International: What Each Index Holds
2. What it costs
- Expense Ratios: What a Fund’s Fee Costs You Over 30 Years
- Loads, 12b-1 Fees and Advisory Fees: The Costs Beyond the Expense Ratio
- Reading a Fund Fact Sheet and Prospectus Fee Table
- Run your own numbers: the fund fee calculator
3. How the pieces fit together
- Diversification and Asset Classes: Why Not Everything Moves Together
- Asset Allocation by Time Horizon: A Method, Not a Model Portfolio
- Rebalancing: When and How to Bring a Portfolio Back in Line
4. Where to hold it
- Opening a Brokerage Account: What to Check Before You Fund It
- IRA, Roth IRA, Taxable or HSA: Which Account Does What
- Roth or Traditional? Compare Tax Now With Tax Later, and the Roth or traditional comparison
- IRA Contribution Rules: Earned Income, Deadlines and Excess Contributions
- The HSA as an Investment Account: Rules Before Returns
- Backdoor Roth and Pro-Rata Rule: What the IRS Forms Actually Say
5. How it’s taxed
- How Capital Gains Are Taxed: Short Term, Long Term and Your Bracket
- Dividends Explained: Qualified, Ordinary and Reinvested
- Cost Basis and Form 1099-B: Tracking What You Paid
- Wash Sales and Tax-Loss Harvesting: The Rules in Plain English
- Asset Location: Which Investments to Hold in Which Account
Guides that state tax figures say which tax year they apply to at the top of the page, and are updated when the IRS publishes new figures.