It’s that time of year again ( the holidays), and as always, I’ve found myself looking at our first-ever serious investment that happens to be the Coca-Cola Company.
There are stocks you buy for excitement, and there are stocks you buy to sleep well at night. Coca-Cola is the latter. It’s the kind of company that doesn’t ask for your attention, only your patience. In a world full of investments that behave like toddlers needing constant supervision, Coca-Cola is the quiet elder sitting in the corner, humming the same tune it’s hummed for a century. You don’t check on it; you check in with it.
When I started this position in early 2020, I didn’t realize I was planting a seed that would quietly grow behind the scenes of my life. Looking back at the lot history, it reads like an emotional diary: March 2020. April 2020. June. July. The world was burning down, markets whipping around like a live wire, and I was buying fractional shares of a soft drink company.
At the time, it felt small. Insignificant, even. But seeds always do. No one plants a seed because it looks powerful; they plant it because something might grow if you give it time. That’s what KO became for me: an act of hope, disguised as a purchase.
Today the position sits at 44.3741 shares, worth $3,136.36, against a total cost of $2,285.16. That’s a +37.25% total return. Not a lucky return, but a behavioral one, built slowly, quietly, over five years. Built by buying when life was uncomfortable. Built by not panicking. Built by showing up consistently even when I didn’t fully know yet who I was trying to become as an investor.
The oldest lots are my favorites. The shares purchased at $43, $45, $46 during the COVID panic. These aren’t just numbers; they are timestamps. They are tiny monuments of a younger me who was willing to invest at a moment when fear felt louder than logic. They’re sitting at +50% to +60% gains, like bottles of vintage wine aging in the back of a cellar. They carried this entire position on their backs, the quiet champions of the portfolio.
If you’ve ever met an older couple who never raised their voice yet held the entire family together, that’s what these early KO shares are. They don’t brag, they don’t demand attention, yet every performance metric in this position traces directly back to the backbone they created.
But the real compounding engine has been the dividends. Every quarter, without asking, Coca-Cola sent me a small check and then immediately spent it on my behalf buying more Coca-Cola. I never had to tell it what to do. There was no second-guessing, no anxiety, no “what if the timing is bad?” The DRIP just clicked forward, quarter after quarter, as if participating in my future was automatic.
Each fraction, 0.2369 here, 0.3187 there, 0.3094 more recently, is a timestamp from another quarter of my life. Those tiny slivers are a financial journal entry: this is where you were, this is what was happening in the world, this is how long you stayed committed.
And one day, those fractions will eventually become whole shares. Those whole shares will then produce their own dividends, which then buy more Coca-Cola, which then create their own dividends. A kind of quiet self-replication. The financial equivalent of cellular regeneration.
This is how wealth behaves when you stop trying to force it.
If I never bought another share from this moment forward, if I closed my laptop, walked away, and didn’t think about Coca-Cola again until I was older and greyer, here is what this one humble position would likely become:
- In 10 years: ~56 shares, paying me ~$135/year in dividends.
- In 20 years: ~72–75 shares, paying ~$155–$175/year.
- Total dividends collected over that span: ~$3,000–$3,600.
- Value of the position: ~$7,000–$8,500, depending on market cycles.
All from a handful of shares purchased at a time when I didn’t know much, except that the world was uncertain, and Coca-Cola had survived more than a century of uncertainty already. Wars. Recessions. Inflation spikes. Deflation scares. Technology upheavals. Shifts in consumer habits. And yet, decade after decade, that red-and-white script continued selling sugar water to billions of people who found comfort in consistency.
In many ways, it’s one of the purest behavioral finance lessons I’ve ever had. Not because it made me rich, but because it taught me that sometimes the things in your portfolio that feel the quietest are the ones working the hardest.
KO will never be the star of the show. It’s not my Tesla. It’s not my moonshot. It’s not even my fastest compounding dividend stock. But it is a reminder that quiet decisions, repeated consistently, build a kind of wealth that doesn’t shout. It’s the difference between fireworks and candlelight. One is loud and fleeting; the other stays with you.
Coca-Cola is a candle in my portfolio. A small, steady flame that never flickers out.
And in a world obsessed with speed, Coca-Cola rewards slowness.
In a market that constantly demands your attention, it rewards stillness.
In a portfolio filled with movement, it has become one of the few positions that teaches me patience, and patience, not brilliance, is the real driver of compounding.
Your Behavior vs. Your Coca-Cola Position: A Psychological Mirror
What I didn’t expect was how much this position would reveal about me, not financially, but psychologically. Looking at the lot-by-lot history, I can see versions of myself the way an anthropologist studies sediment layers. Each share tells me not just what I was doing, but how I was coping.
In 2020, my purchases were frantic but hopeful. I was buying something stable because stability felt scarce. I didn’t need Coca-Cola to become a rocket ship; I needed it to be a compass. These were the years I learned that disciplined investing isn’t about intelligence, it’s about self-regulation.
By 2021, the lots grew larger. Not because I suddenly became wealthier, but because I became more certain of who I was becoming. You can see confidence in the size of the positions. You can see self-trust in the cadence of the buys. There’s a psychological signature in the pattern: the quieter my mind became, the more consistent my behavior became.
Then 2022 to 2024, the DRIP years. The years where small, automatic reinvestments mirrored the parts of my life that were also becoming more automatic: my fitness habits returning, my stability deepening, my ability to show up for myself becoming routine. DRIP is a financial habit, but what makes it powerful is that it reflects an internal habit: the ability to let small, repetitive actions compound without needing an emotional reward.
And even the short-term lots in 2025 say something: they show refinement. Precision. Intentionality. Shares bought not in crisis, but in clarity. Shares not as a lifeline, but as a choice.
When people talk about portfolios revealing a person’s character, this is what they mean. Coca-Cola is not the story of financial brilliance. It’s the story of behavioral evolution, a quiet map of how I learned to move from fear to rhythm, from reaction to intention, from uncertainty to conviction.
My KO position is not just a financial asset; it’s a psychological artifact.
Closing: Coca-Cola as Legacy, Not Just an Investment
When I think about the future, my child, my partner, the Foundation I plan to build, this position takes on a different shape. It stops being numbers on a screen and becomes something closer to inheritance. A living example of how wealth is really built: not through dramatic choices, but through accumulated calm.
One day, my son won’t marvel at the share price or the total return. He’ll marvel at the fact that I kept showing up. That in the middle of chaos, I still made decisions meant for a future version of us. That I planted financial seeds even when life didn’t guarantee a harvest.
Coca-Cola will likely still be paying dividends long after I’m gone. Those dividends might help my partner in retirement. They might help fund a scholarship through my foundation. They might help my child one day when he’s building something of his own.
But more than the dollars, I hope they carry the message:
“This is what consistency looks like. This is what patience feels like. This is what it means to believe in a future you can’t yet see.”
KO will never be the flashiest holding in my portfolio, but it will be one of the most symbolic, a reminder that sometimes the most ordinary investments become extraordinary when you invest not just money, but intention.
And that’s the real power of compounding: not what it does to your portfolio, but what it teaches you about yourself.
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The Broke College Student 
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