Where does the Couch Potato name come from?
In 1987, Scott Burns, then a financial writer for the Dallas Morning News, began suggesting that investors simply put half their money in an index fund that tracked the stocks in the S&P 500, and the other half in a fund that tracked the entire US bond market. Every year, he said, rebalance the portfolio so it’s once again 50% stocks and 50% bonds. “You need to pay attention to your investments only once a year,” he wrote. “Any time it’s convenient. Any time you can muster the capacity to divide by the number 2.” He called his ultra-simple investment idea the “Couch Potato portfolio.” When MoneySense magazine launched in 1999, founding editor Ian McGugan brought the Couch Potato idea to Canada. Since then, MoneySense has been a leading proponent of the strategy, and has created several Couch Potato portfolios for Canadian investors.
