Hey Reader ♥,

Two weeks ago I started taking magnesium before bed.

I know, I know. People have been telling me to do this for years. But I sleep well. I fall asleep easily, I stay asleep, I wake up feeling okay. So I never really saw the point.

Then I looked at my sleep score. Consistently low eighties. Not bad. Fine, actually.

I decided to try it anyway.

Two weeks in, something shifted. I started feeling genuinely tired when it was time to sleep, not just ready to wind down. I stopped needing the TV on as a bridge to unconsciousness. I just... went to sleep.

My scores jumped. Low nineties. Mid nineties.

I feel a different kind of rested now. Not dramatically different on the outside. But noticeably different on the inside.

I was already sleeping. I just didn't know how much better sleep could feel.

This is the same thing that happened with my portfolio.

A few years ago I was already investing. I had a financial advisor, someone I trusted, through one of the big banks. She was charging me 1.75% to manage my money. I thought that was just how investing worked. I was doing the thing. I was putting money in. The portfolio was growing.

What I didn't know was that 1.75% fee was acting as an anchor. Every year. Whether the market went up, went sideways, or went down. Silently compounding against me.

On a $200,000 portfolio over 30 years at a 7% average return, the difference between a 1.75% fee and a 0.15% fee isn't a few thousand dollars.

It's over $500,000.

I moved to a robo-advisor first. That brought my fee down to 0.75%. Then eventually I moved to self-directed investing using low-cost ETFs, and now I'm paying under 0.15%. Each move wasn't dramatic. I wasn't doing anything fancy.

I was just sleeping better.

I built a free calculator so you can run your own numbers.

Put in what you have today, what you contribute, how long you plan to invest, and what you're currently paying in fees. The result might surprise you the way my sleep score surprised me.

​Run the Investment Fee Calculator ​→ ​

The full story, including the specific numbers from my own portfolio and what the move to self-directed actually looked like, is in a recent video. It's embedded on the calculator page so you can watch it right there.

The lesson from both: you don't have to be doing things wrong to do them better.

Sometimes the move isn't fixing a crisis. It's asking what 93 looks like when you've been living at 82.

With purpose,

P.S. Run the calculator and see what your number looks like: liannehannaway.com/investment-calculator. Then hit reply and tell me what you find. I'd love to know.

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