Many people are wondering “How to keep my VOO holdings long”, especially when you plan to long-invest in it.
Sounds like it is not easy, right?
So here, I will share my 3 useful tips to keep my VOO holdings long, and you can follow my ways, making it easier to long-invest it.
Think about what you want to archive via VOO
The first way is, think about what you want to archive via investing in VOO.
This will provide you a more realistic, visible and clear goal, so you have more intention to do this.
The most common goal is “accumulate valuable money for retirement”, and it’s also my goal to do this.
But for me, these words are still not enough, cause it’s just a concept for my direction, and the actual things I want to have and achieve.
So, I revise it in a more precise way, that is “I will accumulate over 3 million dollars once I retire at my 65”. From these wordings, I know I will have 3 million for my retirement, it’s visible and more realistic, and gives me more power to invest in VOO.
Make your wish more clear and detailed, you will better understand what you will have, and that gives you more strength to do this.
But if you don’t know how to set up your goals, what should you do?
It’s easy, you can just set up a simple goal, for example, accumulate $500,000 in 5 years, it’s simple, clear, and detailed.
Start from such a simple wish, once you achieve it, and can make bigger, and more challenging targets, step by step, make your life better.
When you have a concrete goal in mind, you will run for it with your best.
Treat it as a game with milestone
Second, treat your investment as a game, set up some milestones.
This can make your investing journey more fun, and you will walk further on this way.
All of these are to strengthen your confidence, so when you face any turbulence, you can stand still, treat them in a peaceful way.
So how to set up the milestones? Here’s my case.
First, I put my achievement in 2 aspects, one is the amount accumulated, and another one is the time I hold.
Let’s start from “amount accumulated”.
I set the point starting from $100, then $1000, $5000, $10000, $20000, $50000, $100000, and so on.
Of course, you can set up more achievement points than mine, it’s just a sample for you to follow.
Next, “the timeline for holding”.
I split the time points like 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 1.5 years, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, 5 years, and so on.
Like previous, you can also split them into more pieces.
Once the goals are set, now let’s decide what gifts we will have when achieving them, so when you reach the goal, you will have more incentives to keep it long.
I personally treat myself with fine dining and travel as an incentive when my goal is achieved.
If you want to buy something you’ve been eager for so long, it’s fine.
Anyway, no matter in what forms, just give you some treats when you reach your set goals, you will feel fulfilled, and have more confidence to keep on going, then you can long-invest in VOO more easily.
Focus on yourself, forget the price and market sayings
Finally, focus on yourself, forget the price and market sayings.
I think it’s the most important thing you should do.
Let’s start by forgetting the price first.
In my experience, the more you focus on stock price, the more stress you will feel, and increase the chance to make mistakes.
When you watch the price change several times in one day, everytime you see the price, you must have ideas come out in your mind, then, with these ideas accumulate more and more, the stress pops out, and it also accumulates in the same way.
All of these happen without your awareness.
You do it everyday, in the long run, you feel that the price change is a tough thing to you, cause you have already burdened many stresses, even a little change, like 0.1% price drop, can make you angry or feel sad, not to mention when market is under through the turmoil.
Under such negative emotions, you will easily clear out your VOO shares, to make you feel more comfortable.
This is unfavorable for us to long-hold our VOO shares.
Next, the market sayings is also a thing we need to avoid.
Each day, we receive a lot of information and ideas from the media, social networks, and our close family, fridens, and colleagues.
To be honest, they are far from our burden, so we have little time to judge its correctness. Furthermore, we just simply think they are right, hence we are misguided, switching from a broad way to a small country path, making us lose money.
The more you stick to social media and financial news networks, the more possibility you will experience such things, and have loss eventually.
You don’t want to see these on your VOO journey, right?
So, the best solutions are, get away from them, and put more focus on yourself.
How to do this? It’s easy, just delete them from your mobile and your browser, so you will have the lowest contact to them.
Then, put focus back to yourself, think about your career, your family, your interests, and what’s your eventual goals in your life. Once you decide it, then just go for it, no more caring about your investing.
After all, investing in VOO is just a small fraction of your entire life, you should not take a lot of effort on such minoral thing, unless you work in investment banking or institutes.
The less you eye on investment, the more you will earn from it.
Above 3 tips are based on my experience, and they’re useful for me. But, if you have more feasible and useful ways to keep holding your VOO, it’s also fine. After all, keeping the VOO shares long is our main goal, no matter which way, if you can do it, you will succeed!