JL Collins

American personal finance blogger and author whose The Simple Path to Wealth advocates low-cost index fund investing as the most reliable route to financial independence.

JL Collins spent decades in the corporate world before becoming a blogger and eventually the author of The Simple Path to Wealth, published in 2016. The book originated as a series of letters to his daughter explaining personal finance, and that origin gives it a warmth and directness that distinguish it from the more anxious or complicated voices in financial self-help. Collins’s argument is simple and consistent: invest in low-cost index funds, primarily the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund; stay the course through downturns; spend less than you earn; and let compounding do the work over decades.

Collins is a committed disciple of Jack Bogle and the evidence base for index fund investing, and The Simple Path to Wealth is one of the clearest single-volume articulations of that philosophy available. He addresses the psychological obstacles to long-term investing — fear during market drops, the temptation to time the market, the appeal of individual stock picking — with practical directness and without condescension.

The book’s limitations are those of any strong-conviction investing philosophy: it assumes a long investment horizon, a relatively stable income, and a risk tolerance for equity market volatility that not all readers have or can afford. Collins acknowledges these constraints but doesn’t dwell on them. For readers who already have emergency savings and some financial stability, The Simple Path to Wealth offers an unusually clear and well-reasoned path. It is the book many financial advisors wish more of their clients had read first.