The Secret of the Elite is Not a Secret

They call it “direct investing.”

The name is an act of misdirection, a piece of bland corporate jargon designed to make your eyes glaze over. It sounds like something you’d read in a pamphlet in a sterile waiting room. It’s supposed to sound boring.

That’s the point.

The last thing the people who practice it want is for you to understand what it really is: the art of getting paid to live your life, of bending the world of taxes and expenses to your will, of playing a completely different game with completely different rules.

The game you’re taught to play is the one on the screen.

Buy stocks.

Buy bonds.

Go to work.

Drain your time.

Divide your energy.

Give your money to a man in a suit who has a better haircut and a worse understanding of risk than you do. He’ll put you in an index fund, which is the financial equivalent of being a passenger on a very, very large bus. You have no say over the driver, the route, or the other screaming passengers. You just hope the bus doesn't drive off a …