I served in the U.S. Navy for four years. Like most service members, I participated in the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). I didn't know much about investing. But I knew enough to max the match.
During that time, I spent a lot of my off-hours reading. Self-help. Finance, leadership, management, and economics. I wasn't just trying to learn how money worked. I was trying to understand how people build something meaningful over time, whether that's a career, a business, or a life.
I went as far as starting an entrepreneur club aboard the USS Harpers Ferry. Sailors from all over the world would meet up to talk books, investments, business ideas, and startups. In the middle of deployments and long days, we were thinking long-term about ownership, leverage, and freedom.
One idea kept surfacing everywhere: compounding interest.
Not the flashy version you see online, but the quiet, disciplined kind that rewards patience and time. The kind that doesn't care about headlines or emotions.
After leaving active duty, I realized something important: most people only experience that discipline inside a 401(k) or TSP. Outside of it, investing becomes emotional, reactive, and chaotic.
I didn't want that for myself.
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The Barrier Came Down
For most of history, investing on your own required calling brokers, mailing paperwork, and paying fees that made small accounts impractical. That changed in the mid-2010s.
Platforms like TD Ameritrade dropped fees to $10 per trade. Still expensive for small accounts. Two trades and you'd burned $20. But it was progress.
Then Robinhood eliminated trading fees entirely. That single decision had a significant impact on retail investing.
For the first time, everyday people could choose their own stocks without friction. No gatekeepers. No commissions quietly draining small accounts.
A friend who was already in the game helped me get set up. I wasn't gambling. I was participating.
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My First Investment
I made my first investment in Fitbit.
It wasn't a Wall Street-calculated move. It was intuitive. Wearables were everywhere. People cared about health. The product made sense to me at the time, though my reasoning was basic and could easily have been wrong.
Not long after, I was sitting with another friend one evening, talking about stocks and technology. He told me about a convention he attended in Los Angeles where he tried on a virtual reality headset.
That was the first time I'd ever heard of VR.
He talked about gaming, immersion, and how he believed this technology would eventually move into everyday life. That conversation stuck with me.
I started researching the VR space.
What I found was interesting. The big names (Facebook at the time, Google, Microsoft, Sony) were all involved. But then I noticed two companies I'd barely heard of: NVIDIA and AMD.
So I dug deeper.
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Seeing the Infrastructure, Not the Product
NVIDIA and AMD weren't just building consumer-facing products. They were building the infrastructure. The graphics processing units that made VR possible.
They weren't betting on one headset or one company. They were supplying the core component that powered the entire ecosystem.
That changed how I thought about the opportunity.
NVIDIA stood out to me. It was more established, had been building chips longer, and already had partnerships with laptop manufacturers and even Tesla.
Then I checked the price.
NVIDIA was trading around $42 per share at the time.
I didn't overthink it. I bought a small position.
And NVIDIA started to climb.
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The Mistake That Taught Me Everything
Around that time, I was reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. I also kept hearing a common saying repeated everywhere:
"If you ever double your money, sell."
So when NVIDIA crossed $100 per share, I sold.
On paper, it was a win. In reality, it was a lesson.
I wasn't investing. I was trading. Short-term thinking disguised as discipline.
Had I held, that position would have grown significantly based on NVIDIA's subsequent performance, though of course there was no guarantee at the time that would occur.
I'm not sharing this to suggest NVIDIA was a guaranteed winner or that I somehow knew it would perform this way. I'm sharing it because I broke what would later become my own rule and paid for it in opportunity cost. The lesson wasn't about picking the right stock. It was about having the discipline to hold it when my thesis remained intact.
That realization stung. But it clarified everything.
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From Trading to Trust
I wasn't interested in getting rich quick. I was interested in building something stable. Something that didn't require constant attention. Something I could steward faithfully over time.
I stopped reacting and started committing. I stopped trying to time entries and started automating them. I stopped speculating and started owning.
I focused on companies I believed in for the long term. I set up auto-investing. I dollar-cost averaged. And most importantly, I stopped treating the market like a casino.
I started treating it like a farm, at least for my own approach.
Buffett's farm analogy resonated with me personally. The idea that if his son wanted a farm, he'd buy the land, plant the seeds, and then go live life. He wouldn't sit around watching the corn grow every day. He'd trust it would be there when it was time to harvest.
I took that literally for myself. I bought positions. Set auto-invest. Went and trained for Ironman.
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The Keepr Principle
I needed a framework I could follow consistently. So I built one for myself.
I commit to companies I believe in for the long term. I don't set exit timelines. I think in decades, not quarters. I automate contributions so decisions don't rely on discipline in the moment. I remove myself from the emotional cycle.
It mirrors the discipline of a 401(k), but with the freedom to choose my own investments.
For me, the outcome isn't just financial. It's personal.
This approach has allowed me to train for triathlons, pursue a graduate degree, surf, serve, and live more fully without obsessing over charts or headlines.
For me, capital works best when it supports faithfulness without consuming attention.
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Final Thought
I didn't want to ignore my investments entirely, but I found I couldn't personally sustain the emotional cost of active trading. I needed something in the middle for myself. A system I could trust without constant oversight.
The Keepr Principle is what I built.
It's about trust. Patience. Stewardship. And discipline.
I invest. I hold. I steward what's been entrusted to me.
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This reflects my personal investment framework and journey. It is not investment advice. All investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results.