Editor’s note: This article is the second in a five-part series featuring the best advice about money from investing greats, renowned economists, top financial planners and other experts. Other articles focus on advice about managing money, retirement planning, family finance and the best advice experts have gotten from their moms and dads.
We asked a diverse group of 35 top financial experts — acclaimed investors, advisers, money managers, economists, influencers and more — to share their very best advice with Kiplinger readers. The essential question we put to them: Of all the many recommendations about money you’ve given or received, what are the best, most meaningful or most impactful tips you want to pass along?
In this article, the second in the series, we feature their advice about saving and investing. We hope you find their suggestions as smart and useful — and, occasionally, surprising, funny and moving — as we did.
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The best saving advice
Reframe your thinking about saving and spending.
“We are a consumer culture, so most people don’t even have the idea that one of the many things they can buy with their money is financial freedom. To them, saving for, say, retirement, feels like deprivation. The way I think about it, that is money I am spending to buy the thing that is most valuable to me, and that’s my financial freedom. You simply have more options in life if you have financial resources.”
—JL Collins, author of The Simple Path to Wealth
Pay yourself first.
“The best piece of personal finance advice ever is to pay yourself first. It’s almost like an identity you need to embrace. It’s essentially as soon as you get a dollar, rather than spending it, you decide to save and invest a percentage of that first. Ideally, this is a mind-set you learn as a child and instill in your own children early on, like when they get their first money as a birthday present. If you do this, you will be a multimillionaire. I don’t care what job you have, how far you went in school. It is a slam dunk.”
—Brad Klontz, cofounder of the Financial Psychology Institute and managing principal at Your Mental Wealth Advisors
Avoid lifestyle creep.
“People increase their lifestyle expenses too quickly, especially when they get raises. But if they’re able to just keep their cost of living low while they increase their income, that is essentially the formula for financial success. You increase your income, keep your costs low, save the difference every year as you get raises, let compounding take over, and hopefully you should get to a very, very comfortable place in your life.”
—Humphrey Yang, former financial adviser and current YouTube, TikTok and Instagram content creator
(Image credit: Getty Images)
View saving as a way to buy yourself choices.
“I don’t know when I’ll retire, or if I’ll retire, but I won’t have much input into the decision, if I don’t have savings. So, it’s about growing that nest egg to give myself choices down the line. I’m planning for financial independence more than retirement, because we often underestimate how much we’re going to change over time. We don’t know if we’ll still love our job in 10 years or if we’ll want to do something completely different. Having savings gives you options to explore other possibilities.”
—David Blanchett, head of retirement research for Prudential Financial
Create clear, defined financial goals.
“Visualizing your financial goals is very important. Take some time to develop clear, exciting visions for why you would deprive yourself of buying a luxury good, a nice meal out or that outfit you want right now, for why you’re delaying your gratification. I’ve had people create vision boards of their financial goals, then determine what practical steps they were going to take to accomplish the goal, how much they would set aside each pay period for it and their exact timeline for realizing it.”
—Brad Klontz
Related: 4 Psychological Tricks to Save More in 2026
Don’t let debt deter you.
“The worst advice I’ve heard is: You shouldn’t invest until you’re debt free. But the reality is people have student loans and mortgages. And they still need to be saving and investing to build wealth. You can still put money in a Roth IRA or get the employer match in your 401(k), even if you’ve got $25,000 in student loans.”
—Marguerita Cheng, certified financial planner and CEO of Blue Ocean Global Wealth
The best investing advice
Focus on what you can control.
“Manage what is within your control, and ignore things that are outside of your control. Flip on the TV, and what are they talking about? Venezuela, interest rates, Ukraine, midterm elections, nonfarm payrolls. Every single one of these things is totally outside of your control and can’t be predicted. So what can you control? Your asset allocation, your financial plan, your costs. Be disciplined and manage your own behavior, and that will have an enormous impact on how your portfolio does over decades.”
—Barry Ritholtz, cofounder, chair and CIO of Ritholtz Wealth Management
Do your homework.
“People are careful when they buy a refrigerator. They spend hours purchasing airline tickets. But they tend to put little work into purchasing common stocks. With all financial decisions, put effort in, take some time and be careful.”
—Peter Lynch, vice chairman of Fidelity Management and Research; former manager of the Fidelity Magellan fund, generating a 29.2% average annual return during his tenure (1977–1990)
Related: Use This Stock Market Recipe for a Well-Diversified Portfolio
Protect yourself from yourself.
“When we see a downturn, especially as we near retirement or are already retired, it can be quite scary, and that fear gives us adrenaline, which makes us want to act. You need to rely on your rational self to overcome it. I always tell people that if you’re going to rebalance your portfolio or diverge from your plan during the year, set a specific date in advance when you will always do this, and then, no matter what happens, wait until your day. I recommend choosing one at the end of February, when things are typically really boring. That way, if the market crashes on April 3, like it did in 2025 after steep tariffs were announced, you just remind yourself: I’ll deal with this on February 27. You don’t do something on April 4.”
—Teresa Ghilarducci, labor economist and retirement security expert, professor at The New School for Social Research and author of How to Retire with Enough Money
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Understand the elevator pitch.
“You should be able to explain to a 10-year-old in 30 seconds or less why you own a stock. If the company is too complex, move on to other options, as there are thousands of public companies.”
—Peter Lynch
Never invest with a person.
“Limited partnerships were popular in the early 1980s. They offered great tax benefits. A friend got me to invest several thousand dollars in one managed by a friend of his, investing in Texas houses. But then tax laws changed in 1986, eliminating the tax benefits of limited partnerships, and the person managing the partnership turned out to be a cheat. It was a good lesson. I lost less than Bernie Madoff’s investors, but the common lesson is the same and true: Never invest with a person.”
—Meir Statman, finance professor at Santa Clara University and author of A Wealth of Well-Being: A Holistic Approach to Behavioral Finance
Keep it simple.
“My most valuable financial lesson came from Vanguard founder Jack Bogle, who taught me the virtue of keeping things simple. I’ve tried to take that to heart in terms of my own household’s financial plan. I like to have a portfolio with very few moving parts, where you can easily identify where you do and don’t have risk. And the simple building blocks, broad-market index funds, are often inexpensive to add to your portfolio. The typical worker has about 12 employers in their lifetime, so many of us are carrying around multiple retirement account plans. We can’t get away from that complexity, so to the extent you can within those portfolios, be as minimalist as possible. It will keep you focused on what really matters: your asset allocation and your savings rate.”
—Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning at Morningstar and author of How to Retire
Don’t let monthly economic data rattle you.
“Resist the urge to overreact to monthly economic data. In general, it is a lot of noise and volatility. Take the numbers with a grain of salt, and don’t react to the first data point that comes out. If it’s a big change, you need to see another number. I am very big on looking at three-month averages instead.” —Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors and former White House and Federal Reserve economist
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Buy the world.
“You need to invest globally. A lot of people have all their money in the U.S. market and historically, that home-country bias of investing in just one market has been a horrible, no good, terrible idea.”
—Meb Faber, CEO, Cambria Investments
Take the long view.
“Don’t be anchored to the moment and make short-term decisions. Real money is made over time, and people have to tune out the noise and whatever the issue of the day is. Have conviction about why you see a different world. “
—Mellody Hobson, co-CEO and president, Ariel Investments
Related: The Stock Market Is Selling Off. Here’s What Investors Should Do
Set realistic expectations.
“Define what success looks like in advance when you hire an adviser. If your definition of success is returns that beat the market, that’s not something that anyone should be promising. There might be bad actors out there who will promise it, but nobody can guarantee beating the market all the time. If your expectations are unrealistic, you’re more likely to make a behavioral error—to sell at the wrong time, buy at the wrong time or maybe fire your adviser at the wrong time.”
—Peter Lazaroff, chief investment officer of Plancorp in St. Louis
Count on time, not timing.
“Investors can get tripped up focusing on short-term events and trends, thinking they have to time things just right rather than coming at investing from a long-term-planning perspective. Put together a thoughtful plan with a high probability of meeting your objectives, then stay disciplined as short-term trends and events happen. If your objectives and your circumstances haven’t changed, and you stay the course, over time you have a higher probability of achieving your objectives.”
—Mary Ellen Stanek, founder, managing director and chief investment officer emeritus, Baird Asset Management
Understand your odds.
“There is a cohort of short-term retail traders, born out of the pandemic and the rise of betting markets, who approach investing more like gambling and gaming. The way I think about the difference: Investing is owning; gambling is hoping. In investing, the odds are with you. As a long-term investor, the odds are that you are going to do well over time with compounding, with investing in high-quality companies and securities and being diversified. We know the odds are not with us when we gamble.”
—Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist, Charles Schwab & Co.
Let your goals guide you.
“Start with your goals. Once you are clear on what your goals are, what you’re saving for, how much you need, and when you need it, it will be much easier to figure out how you should invest. It’s a crucial step some people skip over as they move right into deciding: I want to own AI stocks or crypto or whatever. But the foundation for anything you do investing-wise should be what are your goals for your money.
Specificity is important too, because it will inform your time horizon, but also make the goals seem more important and valuable. You’ll be less likely to override the decision and spend the money in the short term. So don’t just say I want to retire someday, but really give some thought to what that will look like. Try to visualise what you’re investing for.”
—Christine Benz
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Cast a wide net.
“If you look at 10 companies, you’ll find one is overpriced and one is underpriced. If you look at 30 companies, three are overpriced and three are underpriced. If you look at 100, 10 are overpriced and 10 are underpriced. The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game.”
—Peter Lynch
Don’t take undue risks.
“It was really frustrating for me during the COVID period and subsequent years to see so many younger investors hyper-trading with high-risk zero-day options, prediction markets and crypto. Young people are ‘time billionaires’ with a long runway to compound returns. If you put aside a little money and invest it in the global stock market, average returns of 10% a year, by the time you are 70, you’ll have $1 million. You don’t even have to do anything; just don’t touch it.”
—Meb Faber
Don’t believe market predictions.
“I have zero respect and nothing but disdain for every single person who makes any post on social media pretending that they can predict what’s going to be happening in the stock market. I get shocked by the number of people with relatively high social status, who are well known in their field, who are trying to predict what’s going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, next decade, with regard to something that is utterly unpredictable. Flipping a coin would probably be more accurate because at least that is unbiased. I hate this because people listen to these predictions and then use them to make investment decisions. These experts’ words drive people to take action and it usually ends up hurting them.”
—Brad Klontz
Note: This item first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.
