The village idiot could have made it’: Warren Buffett’s dead-simple playbook to supercharge your retirement now Thomas Kent Sun, August 23, 2026 at 4:00 AM PDT 5 min read VOO IVV CNBC Moneywise and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue through links in the content below. Warren Buffett has spent more than eight decades outperforming Wall Street. Yet, ordinary Americans can follow a much simpler strategy to build wealth. "America has been a wonderful place to invest money," Buffett told CNBC's Becky Quick in an interview (1). Must Read Jeff Bezos backs a platform that lets anyone invest in rental homes for as little as $100 6 ways to build wealth like a landlord without actually being one JPMorgan sees gold hitting $5,000/oz by Q4 and savvy investors are protecting their wealth with a tax-advantaged Gold IRA. Get your free guide from Priority Gold The tax breaks in Trump's 'big beautiful bill' expire after 2028. Here are 4 moves to make before the window closes When Buffett bought his first stock in 1942, he recalled, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had just crossed 100. At the time of the interview, it was hovering around 52,000 (roughly 520 times higher) before counting the dividends investors could have collected and reinvested. So far in 2026, the Dow Jones has hit a new record high 24 times (2). "The village idiot could have made it," Buffett joked. His point was that investing in productive American businesses has historically created tremendous wealth. In his 2018 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, for instance, Buffett calculated that a hypothetical $114.75 invested in a no-fee S&P 500 index fund in 1942 would have grown to $606,811 by January 2019 with dividends reinvested (3). Despite this advantage, investors can undermine their positions with fashionable assets, constant trading or needlessly complicated strategies. Once investing becomes unnecessarily complicated, Buffett warned, it starts looking like gambling. Here's how you can put his simple philosophy to work for your retirement. Own a broad piece of American business Buffett has made billions identifying exceptional individual companies. But his regular recommendation for everyday investors is far easier to follow. "My regular recommendation has been a low-cost S&P 500 index fund," Buffett wrote in his 2016 letter to shareholders (4). An index fund allows you to invest in a large collection of companies through a single purchase. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says this kind of diversification can reduce portfolio risk, although it can't eliminate losses (5). Popular options include the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA: VOO) and the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA: IVV). Story Continues If you prefer the hands-off, tech-forward approach to building wealth, Vanguard's Digital Advisor puts the investing expertise of one of the world's largest asset managers right at your fingertips. It takes the guesswork out of investing by building a personalized portfolio for you using Vanguard's well-known low-cost ETFs and mutual funds then keeps things running smoothly with automatic rebalancing. The platform also offers guidance...
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