Most people don't need a financial advisor, a brokerage account with 400 funds, or a daily habit of watching CNBC. They need five ETFs and the discipline to leave them alone.
I'm Michael Ashley. I spent two decades in banking and asset management — retail, commercial, investment banking, and performance reporting — at institutions including Citi, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and BNY Mellon.
That career gave me an unusual vantage point. I watched professional investors spend enormous energy on decisions that moved returns by fractions of a percent. I watched colleagues at major banks hold savings accounts paying 0.01% while their employer's trading desk earned 4% on overnight cash. And I watched ordinary investors — smart people, people who understood compound interest — get talked into portfolios they didn't understand by advisors who earned commissions on the complexity.
The pattern I kept seeing: simple beats complicated, almost every time, for almost every investor.
The financial internet is mostly noise. Thousands of articles about obscure ETFs, listicles ranking the "17 best dividend stocks," and YouTube channels that discovered a new "game-changer" every week. The people reading that content are not getting richer. They're getting busier.
Richiest started from a single conviction: a normal investor needs one fund per job, and there are five jobs. Park your cash somewhere safe. Earn income from it. Build long-term wealth. Roam internationally if you want true diversification. Take a calculated risk if you can afford to lose it. That's the whole portfolio.
Everything on this site exists to make that thesis concrete — specific fund recommendations, side-by-side comparisons, tools to build your own allocation, and analysis that says what I actually think, not what sounds diplomatic.
Every ETF page on Richiest is built to the same standard: a clear opinion up front, specific fund data, honest comparisons against the alternatives, and a direct answer to the question "who should actually own this." No filler. No hedged non-answers.
The Build Your Frame tool lets you dial in your own allocation by life stage. The Dividend Calculator turns yield percentages into actual dollar amounts. The Expense Ratio Calculator shows what fees cost you in 10, 20, and 30 years — a number that tends to surprise people.
The comparison guides answer the questions investors actually search for: VOO vs VTI vs SPY, SCHD vs VYM vs VIG, what broker to use. These aren't sponsored rankings — they're the answer I'd give a friend.
Nothing on this site is personalized investment advice. I don't know your tax situation, your income, your risk tolerance, or whether you're three years from retirement or thirty. What I can do is give you a framework that works for most people most of the time, specific fund analysis, and honest opinions about tradeoffs.
If something here helps you make a better decision — or stops you from making a bad one — that's the win.