Simple Is Not the Same as Easy
Part two of a two-part reflection on JL Collins' The Simple Path to Wealth.
In part one[1], I wrote about where I agree with JL Collins — that the core rules of building wealth are genuinely simple. But I think we have to ask, if the path is that simple, and the map is free, why do so few people reach the end of it?
Part of the answer is that knowing a rule and walking it are very different things. That gap is not a gap in knowledge; it is a gap in action. And one way to resolve that gap might be to ask for help from an external party. But Collins ignores that gap, and in fact, closes the door on the very same help that some people might need to close that gap.
Collins reaches that conclusion in two ways, and I feel both miss the forest for the trees.
Before I continue, I should be clear: I am a licensed adviser, so weigh my words accordingly. I earn my living from fees. The very fees Collins tells you to be wary of. But hear me out.
First claim: that the way an adviser is paid makes him a bad actor.
Collins treats commissions, and the advisers who earn them, as inherently conflicted. I don't believe the problem is commissions by themselves. The problem is the adviser whose sole agenda is revenue. An adviser who does right by you has done nothing wrong, and deserves his pay. Good advice and fair payment can, and must, sit side by side. But an adviser for whom the fee comes first and your interest second, who recommends what is best for him, rather than for you, that is a real conflict. And it rarely shows on the surface.
The fault was never in how an adviser is paid; it is in what he is really serving. That applies to every model — commission, fee-based, fee-only alike. It applies to any business at all, in fact: healthcare, property, the law, etc.
Collins proposes that if you must pay someone, pay a fee-only adviser. Some have called them unbiased, since they earn from advice alone. But by my argument, the label settles nothing. An unscrupulous fee-only adviser will tell you what you want to hear, end the meeting fast, and move on to the next. He makes you feel good, but not necessarily end up good. An ethical commission-based adviser will hear you out, challenge you where it matters, and propose what actually fits your needs; and because he is paid only if you actually act, his incentive pushes toward the very thing you struggle to do yourself — closing the gap.
The payment mechanism does not matter. The adviser does.
So Collins' real complaint should not be that advice costs money. It should be: how do you find an ethical adviser?
I won't pretend that is easy. But you are not helpless: judge the adviser, not the fee arrangement. Watch whether the process begins with understanding you, and whether they can name their own limits as readily as their strengths.
Second claim: that fees erode returns, so you need no one.
Mathematically, he is right. A fee is a cost, a drag on outcomes, and costs compound. And for a simple index strategy, he argues, an adviser's value does not justify that cost. I agree with the principle beneath it: an adviser who creates no value ought not to be paid.
So the hard question is the one the book raises but never answers. Do advisers create value?
I argue that good ones do — and the value we create is precisely the thing the book names but walks past. Inaction. The very gap between knowing and walking. This, I think, is where the second claim seriously mischaracterises the issue: it fixes on the visible fee while ignoring the far larger, invisible cost.
Inaction: the real cost.
Collins compares two investors: one who pays a fee, one who does not, both otherwise doing everything right. Framed that way, the fee is pure leakage, and he wins the argument easily. And for a genuinely disciplined person, the person who will invest steadily, diversify sensibly, and sit still through every crash without flinching, Collins is absolutely right. That person does not need an investment adviser, and I would tell them so[2].
But that person is uncommon. Far more common is the comparison nobody draws. The fee-payer against the non-player: the person who invests, with fees, against the person who pays no fee but also never invests. The one who, with an adviser beside him, stays invested through the storm, against the one who sells in the middle of it. The real contest is not the fee-payer against the disciplined solo investor, but a fee-payer against a paralysed player.
I have written before about how the average investor consistently earns less than the market they are invested in — not through bad funds, but through their own timing, their own fear, their own very human hands[3]. And don't take my word for it; this was studied at length by DALBAR[4],[5].
That gap — the behaviour gap — is the whole game. And it does not close by itself. Fees are a certain, visible cost. The behaviour gap is a larger, invisible one, and it is the one that quietly does the real damage. An adviser earns his keep not by beating the market, which he cannot promise, but by keeping a person invested in it: reminding you of the data, of the plan, and of the actions you already agreed to, at the exact moment every instinct screams to run. Because in the thick of things, we become someone else.
You do not fail because you did not know what to do. You fail in the doing.
So, to sum up. I do not think everyone needs an adviser. The disciplined few genuinely don't. But I cannot agree that no one does, because that conclusion assumes the hard part is knowing the path. It never was.
The path Collins draws is simple, and he draws it well. Read the book. But most of what stands between you and the end of it is not on the page, and never was. It is in whether you can do the simple thing, over and over, for years, when it stops feeling clever and starts feeling like nothing at all. That has never been a knowledge problem. That is an action problem.
Because more often than not, the map doesn't make sense when you are on the road; it only makes sense at the end of the journey. And walking that road is a great deal easier with someone beside you to hold you to the plan when every instinct screams to run
I write on topics related to financial habits and decisions. Do explore my other articles at https://www.williamseah.com/blog if the ideas resonate. Drop me an email at reach.william@gmail.com or text me at 9673 1523 if you'd like to chat over coffee or whisky.
References[1] The Simple Path, and What It Leaves Out — [Part 1 — link once published]
[2] There remains other value an adviser creates — such as planning, and being the go-to person should you die. Some people also simply prefer to outsource the role entirely, to focus on their own core business. These deserve more room than a book review allows; here I am dealing solely with the investment-adviser role.
[3] Why We Are Our Own Worst Enemy — And What We Can Do About It — https://www.williamseah.com/post/why-we-are-our-own-worst-enemy-and-what-we-can-do-about-it
[4] DALBAR's 2025 QAIB report revealed that for 2024, the equity investor gap was 848 basis points (8.48%). DALBAR's warning was that it "underscores a troubling truth: it wasn't market performance that held investors back in 2024 — it was behavior." The gap is real, and DALBAR attributes it to investor behaviour — the exact cost Collins' fee-only maths leaves out. The rules are simple. https://www.dalbar.com/PressReleases/doc/2025QAIBPressRelease.pdf
[5] In the interest of full disclosure, DALBAR's 2026 QAIB report showed the investor gap in 2025 narrowed sharply to just 72 basis points (0.72%) — the smallest since 2012. But DALBAR speaks of the narrowing as "making the year a notable departure from historical patterns that have more often been defined by missed opportunity." My own perspective is that only time will tell whether that gap narrows permanently. https://www.dalbar.com/press-release/dalbars-2026-qaib-report-shows-narrower-investor-gap-amid-a-complex-and-volatile-market-year/
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