re: Dividend stocks and DRIPs as a long term investment vehicle

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i wont share my insights anymore then

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Noooooooooo

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ETF's were created to make money off the ignorance of the many, sorry, that's just the truth. The take your regular joe who knows nothing about the markets, can't read a balance sheet, and understands nothing about dividend history,payout ratios and growth and wow them with all kinds of statistics and returns, etc all while collecting that tiny fee over and over on billions of dollars

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I am not a financial advisor. The ETF statement is just a broad, overreaching statement of nonsense. ETFs provide a tax efficient way for people with large amounts of assets in taxable holdings to reduce current taxation by limiting capital gains as the ETFs greatly reduce or eliminates CGs due to the structure of the ETF and creation units. This is not hard to understand, and to that point they are extremely similar to individual stocks tax impact. You speak to reading balance sheets, etc and I strongly question that someone with zero financial experience is capable of understanding the financial statements of a multi-national conglomerate or having any knowledge of non-US financial reporting. You also have never indicated that the income statement and quality of earnings can be the most important part of due diligence. I am not throwing you under the bus, but you are greatly exaggerating/underreporting the processes and risks some may not pick up. So if someone wanted to invest in international small caps they should buy individual stocks and eschew the diversification and reduction of idiosyncratic risk through the use of an ETF like VSS, etc which offers a wide range of developed/emerging small caps at a very low cost? That would not begin to make sense given the high level of risk involved in the sector.

Most will never inherit life changing amounts of assets and need to learn how to manage their money early and with caution, and progress into other investing endeavors after gaining experience and taking some lumps. DRIPs into large cap companies may not be the worst thing they could do, but it's not necessarily the best. There are people on here that struggle with the concept of tax advantaged accounts and how best to utilize them which has little to do with "picking" stocks, do you think they really are capable of analyzing individual securities?

I am not opposed 100% to what you do, but trying to illustrate your take on some posters on here is offbase with regards to experience and capabilities. Still very surprised you have done this for years without researching more tax efficient investing methodology as your life seems to have changed rather dramatically and what had little drag on your taxes 2-yrs ago could be vastly changed to your detriment over the next 5-20 years.