This is actually very good advice.Buy an index fund if you want to make money. Google "passive vs active performance" if you want a breakdown of how bad the performance of stock pickers really is.
Anyone that tells you about all the money they are making with their stock picks is lying to you (no one ever talks about their losers) or does not know how to properly benchmark their performance and risk. In the long term less than 1% can beat the market.
Focus instead on asset allocation and minimizing transaction costs and taxes. Compounding at a tax free rate is unbeatable.
Rule of thumb on stock allocation is 100 less your age. So if you are 30 then you should be 70% stocks, 30% bonds.
Priorities if I were you.
1. max out 401k. Tax benefit is too great to ignore. Invest in S&P and do not even bother to look at statement.
2. same as above but Roth IRA instead of 401k.
3. same as above but IRA.
4. same as above but HSA. (these have same tax advantage as others but you can use for health expenditure which will be critical when you are retired).
If you want to make money, ignore anyone that talks up stock picks. I will bet any amount of money that they will underperform a buy and hold index strategy over any 10 year period. It might be entertaining to talk stocks but is a terrible approach to investing. I am a professional portfolio manager BTW.
Edit: all of above applies to house flippers. One of my firms investments is providing short term loans to house flippers. We have lent >$500m in the last 5 years. Return on equity of the guys we are lending to is <10% right now. That is a terrible return when you consider all the transaction fees, taxes, illiquidity and risk. I would bet that none of them netted more than 15% after fees and taxes even in the best of times.
Total 180 in regards to how you hard you pimped BSM last year.
