2:14 a.m., Buy

It's 2:14 in the morning and the app is asking me if I'm sure. I've had the account open for eleven weeks. Eleven weeks of putting in the five hundred dollars and then looking at it sitting there as cash, earning nothing, and closing the app. My roommate Tasha calls it my "hover money". She's not wrong. The thing is I know what I'm doing. I've read the books. I've read the subreddit. I've read the subreddit about the subreddit. Low-cost broad market fund, buy it, don't look at it, keep buying it. Every single person who seems to know what they're talking about says the same boring thing, and the boring thing is right there on my screen with a green button under it. And I'm twenty-seven and I can't press the button. My dad lost a lot in 2008. Not everything, but enough that I remember the kitchen conversations, the door closed, the way my mom said "we'll be fine" in a voice that was doing a lot of work. He never bought anything again. Savings account. Certificates of deposit. He'd rather lose slowly to inflation than fast to a chart. So that's in me somewhere. I know that. I type 500 in the box. The app says: Estimated shares: 1.83. Not even two shares. Of a fund that holds like three thousand companies. I own a rounding error of the entire economy. 2:19. I put my phone down and get a glass of water and stand in the kitchen in the dark. The fridge hums. Somewhere in the building somebody's TV is on. Here's what I tell myself: if it goes to zero, it means every company in the country went to zero, and at that point I have bigger problems than five hundred dollars. Here's what I also tell myself: I'm not my dad, and it's not 2008, and even if it were, he'd have been fine if he'd just left it alone. 2:23. I pick up the phone. The button is still there. It's green in a way that feels like it's watching me. I press it.

Order placed. Executes at market open. That's it. That's the whole thing. No fireworks. No confetti. A small grey line of text. I sit on the edge of my bed and I'm shaking a little, which is stupid, and I'm grinning, which is also stupid, and I take a screenshot because I want to remember this exact stupid feeling. Then I go to settings and turn on the recurring buy. Two hundred on the first of every month. I don't want to have to press the button again. I don't trust myself at 2 a.m. I text Tasha: I did it. She's asleep. She'll see it in the morning. I put the phone face down. Market opens in seven hours. I'm not going to look. I'm really not going to look. I'm going to look.