Building Your FIRE Portfolio: An Index Investing Workbook

Knowing that you should invest in low-cost index funds and actually building a coherent, tax-efficient portfolio that you maintain through market cycles are different skills. This course provides the practical process: templates, checklists, and decision frameworks for constructing and managing a FIRE-aligned investment portfolio from the ground up. By the end of this course you will be able to select specific index funds or ETFs for your portfolio, document a target asset allocation with a written investment policy statement, and establish a rebalancing routine that keeps your portfolio aligned with your goals over time. What you will learn: - How to evaluate and select index funds by expense ratio, index tracked, fund size, and tax efficiency — with a comparison worksheet - Choosing a target asset allocation based on your age, timeline, risk tolerance, and FIRE target date - Building a three-fund or two-fund portfolio using funds from your available account options — with worked examples for different brokerage environments - Writing a one-page investment policy statement that documents your allocation target, rebalancing rules, and decision criteria for future changes - Setting up automatic investment contributions aligned with your savings rate, including directing payroll to the right accounts - Rebalancing: when to do it, how to do it with new contributions before selling, and what thresholds should trigger a rebalance - Tax location decisions: which funds to hold in which account type for maximum after-tax efficiency - Reviewing your portfolio at each annual checkpoint using a standard review checklist provided in the course Each module produces a component of your written investment plan: the fund selection worksheet, the allocation target document, the investment policy statement, and the annual review checklist. Worked examples follow a single earner and a dual-income household through the full portfolio construction process to show how the same framework produces different but coherent results for different starting situations. This course is suitable for FIRE-oriented investors who want to build or formalize their portfolio with a documented, repeatable process. No prior portfolio management experience is required. This material is educational and does not constitute personalized investment advice.