The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life

Collins challenges mainstream financial advice that relies on fear, complexity, and over-diversification. He critiques an interview with a well-known economist who claims that increased market volatility has made buy and hold investing ineffective. Collins agrees that investors often panic during downturns but insists the problem is behavioral, not strategic.

Collins mocks the economist’s advice to invest across “the entire spectrum” of asset classes (58), calling it a convoluted response to emotional investing. Instead, Collins promotes emotional discipline: Rather than treat symptoms with complexity, investors should “toughen up” and stay the course during downturns.

He supports his position with historical evidence, citing events like the Crash of 1987, 9/11, and the 2008 recession. Despite these, the Dow rose from 616 in 1974 to 17,823 in 2014, with annualized returns of 11.9%. His repetition—“the market always goes up” (61)—reframes crashes as expected, not catastrophic. 

After debunking expert noise and panic-inducing headlines, Collins methodically lays out eight principles to mentally prepare investors for downturns. While his advice assumes a stable financial context, disposable income, access to stock markets, and long investment horizons, Collins’s emphasis on mindset and emotional discipline, not strategy and precision, as the true levers of wealth empowers everyday readers and taps into a 21st-century zeitgeist of skepticism regarding “expert” opinion.