The benefits of keeping your investing life simple

Thursday, 29 January 2026 10:25 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Are you suffering from decision fatigue? Do you have better things to do than oversee a complex portfolio and keep up with the latest on stock market? Do you just want to do as little as possible when it comes to investing but still have the money you need to meet your goals?

If so, good news: Your exhaustion and disinterest might make you a successful investor if you adopt a portfolio strategy we’ll call KISS (Keep It Simple and Smart).

Beating the market is not the norm

The key to the KISS strategy is to not waste effort trying to select the “best” of anything — stock funds, managers, complicated sector plays. And, instead, to feel confident you can do well enough for your individual goals by sticking with a few low-cost funds over time that track overall market performance.

If the bulk of your money is in a workplace retirement plan, chances are you will have the option to invest in a target-date retirement fund.

Such a fund allocates your money across other stock and bond funds – often index funds — to achieve an allocation that best suits your time horizon to retirement.

The fund’s allocation will grow more conservative (less in stocks, more in bonds) as you near your expected retirement year.

If you don’t have a target date fund, or don’t like the one available in your plan, consider investing instead in three broad index funds and adjust how much you invest in each according to your risk tolerance and time horizon.

Beyond retirement, for any investing you’re doing to meet intermediate-term goals with a five- to 10-year horizon, putting money into a high-quality intermediate-term bond index fund or a low-cost, actively managed one, since this is one arena in which actives have had a reasonably good track record against their benchmarks. Or you might also consider a low-cost, moderate-risk allocation fund of funds — which invests in both stocks and bonds.

The psychological benefits

Just as having fewer but better clothes in an organised closet can reduce your decision fatigue about what to wear, adopting a KISS strategy with just one or a few, low-cost funds can reduce the stress of managing your investments.

With a simple, streamlined portfolio, you’ll know what you’re invested in.

It will be easier to review — which you should do once a year to make sure the way your money is allocated still reflects your risk tolerance and time horizon.

And your portfolio will be easier to explain to a spouse or adult child, who may help you manage it if you become unable to do so alone, or who will eventually inherit it.

And, perhaps most importantly, having a simpler portfolio may make it easier to assess whether you need to save more now. Because no matter how well your investments do, if you aren’t saving sufficiently, the best returns in the world won’t get you where you need to go.