Are you wondering about grabbing hold of various investment opportunities? Have you ever missed a great investment opportunity? Do you want to know the most basic principles of investing your money? Do you want to know the advanced techniques that most experts use when investing? If yes, you have landed on the right site! If you’re looking for a solution to your investing problems, then keep on reading, as we will share with you everything from basic principles to advanced techniques of investing and tell you exactly what you need to know.
So, you saved up some money, and you want it to work for you. You’ve probably heard of this term called investing, and that’s the practice of allocating your money in A way so that it returns more to you in the long run. However, if you are a beginner, it can be overwhelming. There are tons of terms you’ve probably never even heard of. For example, index funds, mutual funds, the S&P 500, and the list goes on.
When it comes to saving money, most people or an average household are unable to save up quite a lot. It’s probably not enough for a house, but nevertheless, there are so many people who decide they should probably invest it in something. They have many choices in front of them, they could invest in stocks, shares, equities, government bonds, corporate bonds, real estate, foreign exchange, crypto, NFT futures, fine art, and watches. There seem to be lots of options out there. What stops most people is the question that echoes around their minds, “what if I lose all my money?” We will also be discussing the answer to this question and where it forms in their mind in the first place. Without any further ado, let’s get started,
Why should you invest?
Alright, plain and simple, the reason why we want to invest is that we want our money to work for us. So if you’re saving your money right now in a savings account, for example, at a big bank or anything like that. The interest rates that they’re paying you on your money are not very high. Typically, a bank likes to offer you .01% or even .15% of your money. So, let’s pretend for a second that someone hypothetically gives you $1 million, and you take that $1,000,000 and you put it in Chase Bank in a savings account. That yields you about .01% at the end of the year. That $1,000,000 will have earned you $100. In that case, your $1,000,000 is not working very hard for you. Imagine you were getting 10% of the money per year. That would be $100,000. That’s a huge order of magnitude different from your $100, which is the typical savings rate at a big bank. Even 5% on $1,000,000 would be $50,000 a year, and we think that many people could live comfortably in retirement off that money.
The options you have as a beginner:
OK, in terms of where to invest your money within what type of account, you usually want to do it in a retirement account or a brokerage account. Now a retirement account is something like a 401K which is employer sponsored, which means that your employer usually sets it up for you and you can invest through their program. Or there are also individual retirement accounts such as the IRA.
The main advantage of investing in a retirement account is that there are usually some tax advantages. Now if you are investing within a retirement account, just know that the tradeoff for those tax advantages is that you usually must wait until you retire to withdraw that money. So essentially, you’re locking up your money until retirement, not all the time.
There are some ways that you can get it out before retirement, but you’ll usually have to pay penalties. Now, if you don’t want to invest in a retirement account, what you can do is simply invest in what’s called a brokerage account, and those are usually taxable on a year-to-year basis. So back in the day before the Internet, what you would do is you would call a stockbroker on the phone. You know you’d call him like this or like this depending on HR. And that’s kind of like the scene in The Wolf of Wall Street you’ll. With that Leonardo DiCaprio, and he’s trying to sell stocks on the phone.
He’s literally writing on a piece of paper that he’s going to sell this arrow tied, you know, industries to this person over the phone. And then he’s going to place the trade via paper and that’s how it’s going to go. Back then you would need a broker to place your trades because the entire financial industry is heavily regulated. It’s not like you can go to a company’s website these days and just buy their stock. Ho The brokerage is something known as, like Fidelity. That’s a brokerage. Charles Schwab.
That’s a brokerage. Robin Hood, Weeble, these are all examples of brokerages. Now if you aren’t sure of how to place a trade within a brokerage like that, at the end of this video, we’re going to go through a live example of how to buy an index fund or an ETF using one of these apps.
What to invest in?
Alright, in terms of what to invest in as a beginner, I’m sure many of you have heard of your friends or family buying individual stocks. So maybe your dad or your friend might put $100 into Coca-Cola stock or Tesla stock or something sexy like that. The thing is though, is that investing in individual companies can take a lot of work. Often, they are more volatile in their returns and they’re like a more active style of investing. Think of it like a day trader. A day trader is looking to maximize their returns daily, so they might be looking at a stock’s performance minute by hour, and that’s something that takes a lot of work. That’s a lot of stress in your life and it’s not something that as beginners we want to do. The more passive style of investing will just involve buying all the stocks in the stock market, kind of forgetting about our investment and just checking in once or twice a year and seeing our money grow over time. And the way that we’re going to do that is to invest in what’s called an index fund.
How much money should you start with?
In terms of how much money do you want to start with investing? This is where I had Let’s say you get 10%. That’s $10 over the course of a year. That’s not a lot of money. So, your money in that case, when you only have $100, it’s much better to invest that in yourself. Build some skills, start a side hustle so that you can get a more consistent income. But if you are someone with a consistent salary, a consistent income, you don’t have any high interest rate debt, and you have an emergency fund taken care of, that’s when to Start to set aside a portion of your income with the intentions of investing.
What is the philosophy and the basics of investing?
Let’s start by discussing the point of investing. The point of investing is for your money to not lose its value overtime and give back to you by becoming an asset. Many people don’t invest their money and just keep it in its original form, which is paper and that’s their choice but the problem with that is inflation. So, your $1000 might be able to buy you a MacBook Air right now, but a few years from now, when inflation goes up, that MacBook Air is going to cost you $1200.
And so over time, your money loses its purchasing power, which is why you want to ideally invest in something because when you invest in something, your money grows magically on its own, if however, you invest it in the right place and that means you can buy a house. It costs a certain amount of money to buy a house right now. But there’s two ways the house makes you money. Number one, you can rent the house out, and so you’re getting rental income every month.
Secondly, in theory, the value of the house will also rise over time. If you haven’t bought the house and you just have that money sitting in a bank account, over time, you’re going to be losing money because inflation is going to eat away at your savings. This was just an example of investing. As mentioned above there are many other options for you to invest in, we’ve got stocks, shares and equities, hedge funds, index funds, corporate bonds. You might have also heard of some people investing in watches and then Fine Arts. You probably heard of people investing in crypto and even gaining lots or losing lots.
Crypto has crashed recently and all of this can get very complicated quite quickly. And so, we’re going to simplify things. Which is why we’re going to talk about investing in stocks and shares, because that is the main kind of investment that normal people rely on. So, stocks and shares are kind of the basics of investing and usually when people talk about investing their money, what they’re referring to is I want to buy some Tesla, I want to buy some Netflix or buy some Amazon. Now, if you’re wondering where to invest and what the basics of stocks are then don’t worry, we have also got you covered on that.
Why and how to invest in stocks and shares:
So, when you’re investing in stocks and shares you cannot do that directly, you will have to go through a middleman, which is called a “broker”. But once you’ve gone through this middleman platform, you now personally own a piece of Apple or whatever company you chose. Now, you can choose from two different paths leading onwards, you can make money from stocks and shares in two different ways.
Firstly, you could make money because I’m hoping the price of Apple or whatever stock you’ve invested in is going to rise overtime. So, ten years later you could sell it for a lot more money than if you bought it. Fingers crossed on this one but not entirely, there are many strategies that experts use to make the right choice or to get as close to it as possible.
But the second way in which you can make money through stocks and shares is like how you make rental income on a house, because certain companies will pay what they call dividends. So, for example, the company you invested in declare A “dividend”, which might be every three months, you would get 20% of the profits that they are distributing to shareholders. You are probably not going to own 20% of a huge company like that because that would cost a lot. But instead, you might get, $10-15 here and there. if we invest in lots of companies that are paying out dividends, then it feels like you’ve got this free rental income. But really, it’s profits from these companies that come into your account every month.
When should you start investing?
Now first let’s answer the question of when you should start investing, because I think this is always a question that people have. It’s like, OK, am I too old to invest? Am I too young to invest? The short answer is that you should start investing as soon as you can. The earlier you start investing, the better because you have more time to take advantage of those compound returns and more time to Hopefully if you mess up you can make up for it Now. I will say that you should not start investing if you don’t have at least three things done yet.
- Number one, you should have all your high interest debt paid off. And the reason is, is that usually high interest rate debt is anything over 10%. So, if you can get A guaranteed return of 10% by paying off your high interest rate debt, you should probably do that because that’s guaranteed. The tradeoff is that, you don’t invest in the market, but what if the market loses you money?
- The second thing you want is to pledge yourself not to touch the money after you invest it unless for emergencies, and this is going to give you a lot of Peace of Mind before you start investing.
- Lastly, only invest what you can afford to lose. So, for example, let’s say you want to buy a house in the next two years with your money. You should probably not be investing that in the market because what if the market takes a downturn and suddenly you can’t buy that house anymore? Investing does carry risk and while we have been going over a strategy that in the long-term Nets you between 8 to 10%, you know at any given point you could lose money. So that’s something you just want to keep in mind.
How to make the right choice when investing in stocks?
So, at this point, you can now buy stocks in these different companies. You can own a small percentage of said company. But how are you supposed to choose which companies you should put all your money into? Apple or Netflix or Disney Plus? Or should you go with the Shell or British Petroleum or Ralph Lauren or, Unilever Now at this point, people have various opinions on the matter.
if you’re a beginner to investing, you should not try and pick stocks. The average person will not know enough to know which stocks to buy. They won’t know enough to know when to buy them. But they don’t have to because they have the option to go through an index fund, because realistically you, do not have to have a great insight on this stuff. The people who have an insight on this stuff have been doing this for quite a long time and are financial professionals who do this full time. So now lets discuss the principles of an index fund.
Finding your investing strategy:
What is your investing strategy? Let’s look at what you can do to determine that. So, there are different investing strategies for different types of goals, and I’ve sort of oversimplified it in the slide, but essentially there’s two different ways to invest. There’s the growth and then there’s value investing, which basically is when short-term investors want to be active in the market, they want to trade every day, every week, every month. And there’s also diving and passive investing. This is going to be for long-term investors that want to strike an achievement for sure. That’s sort of hold that money, forget about it, and build generational wealth that way.
Based on the history of the United States market and how stocks have moved, that’s worked out well for most people. It also takes less brain power so that you can focus your time and energy on increasing your income, allowing you to invest even more money. You don’t want to, you know, spend most of your time researching stocks, like stressing over what trades we’re going to make. Most people don’t need the stock market this way. They lose money which is why you should go for passive if you’re not looking to make this your full-time habit.
Compound interest:
So, investing can get our money to compound over time. And the term compound means that when you start that next year, you’ll end up with year two if you get 10% on $1100. At the end of year two, you’ll see the amount compounds as you’ll now receive a larger amount than before, and this cycle will keep on making your money grow faster each year.
Now pretend that this pattern continues for another 20 years. Your money starts to earn money on the previous balance every single year. So, at the end of year 20, you will have $6727. So just by putting $1000 in and getting a return every single year, your money serves to grow and grow and grow, and that’s called compounding. Another reason we want to invest some of our excess cash instead of having it sit in a savings account is the concept of inflation.
How does Inflation affect you and how to stay safe from it:
The US has a central bank and that’s called the Federal Reserve, and that dictates the policies and laws related to banking systems. Still, you just need to know that they are targeting a 2% inflation rate every single year for a healthy economy. Recently the inflation reports have been saying it’s between 6 to 8% a year. That means if our money isn’t earning 6 to 8% a year, that money is losing value just by sitting in the account. It’s losing purchasing power, right? If you want to see inflation in action, all you must do is look at the stamps that you buy for your letters.
What are Index funds?
an index fund is something that A lot of financial advisors will put their clients into. The path to becoming a millionaire is almost guaranteed. So, what is an index fund exactly, though? So, to understand what an index fund is, we need to talk about the fund that preceded it. And that’s known as a mutual fund. A mutual fund is when many investors pool their money together. So, let’s say you have $1,000,000 and your friend has $1,000,000.
You both give it to a mutual fund manager and that fund manager’s job is to try to give us the best possible return. They might raise more money from a bunch of different people and by pulling that money together they then pick a selection of stocks based on their expertise to try to get you the highest return. In exchange for this service the money so they need to get paid a high fee. So, a mutual fund has a professional manager involved, but an index fund on the other hand, is passively managed and it tracks an entire stock index. Stock Index is like the S&P 500, which tracks all the 500 top companies in the United States. The NASDAQ is another example of an index. So, an index fund would automatically track and invest all those companies in that specific index.
So, all we must do as a beginner investor is track and invest in all those companies in that specific index by buying that index fund. You get the idea that Microsoft is in here: Amazon, Alphabet, Exxon, Visa, Tesla, Home Depot. These are all larger companies. However, if you buy an index fund that tracks the S&P 500, your money would get split proportionally among all the S&P 500 companies we see here.
So, an example of an S&P 500 index fund would be like ticker symbol V stocks and Amazon and get split proportionally among all the S&P 500 companies. So, an example of an S&P 500 index fund would be like ticker symbol VFINX. So, if you’re not aware of ticker symbols it’s like an airport code, so whatever you’re landing at your airport, there’s usually. Or sometimes there is more risk and so what we’re looking for is consistent gains over time.
Importance of index funds and their history
Index fund is based on a group of stocks and shares or other things. The index component means that this fund tracks a particular stock market index. For example, in the US there is a famous index fund called the S&P 500, which is basically the top 500 biggest companies in the US. So, Apple makes up a percentage of this and many other companies make up this. The point of the S&P 500 is that it gives you a single number that you can graph over time of like how valuable the stock market is because most of the value of the US stock market is in these 500 companies.
And so, if the value of these 500 companies goes down altogether the graph will also go down, the graph will represent the overall structure of the stock market that these 500 companies form. So, what does this all mean for normal retail investors? Well, basically what it means is we can invest in an index fund. So, let’s say you put $1000 into the S&P 500 index fund. That’s good because your $1000 is now split between 500 of these companies. And crucially, it’s split based on the weighting in the S&P 500.
So, if your $1000 that you’ve just put into the S&P 500 would include Apple’s stock, now you own a bit of Apple, some of that would be Microsoft. So, you now own some of Microsoft stock, which is a very good thing, and this is what experts recommend for most people. overall U.S. companies are going to go up overtime and therefore we don’t have to think too hard about this.
So, what’s the alternative? Well, we talked about how you could theoretically pick stocks yourself. You cannot beat the market. So invest in the market directly. Put your money in an index fund and don’t think too hard about it. People who have previously invested by picking stocks have lost money. Now this is going to vary depending on whatever country you’re in. So, if you want to find the stocks and shares investment. So, if you want to find a stocks and shares investment platform in your country, then just Google that and it will come up.
1. common fears & concerns about investing:
So you’re broadly very unlikely to lose money but might lose money if the value of your investment goes down. And this is where people get worried because they always think, if I invested my hard-earned cash into these stocks and shares, what if it goes to zero? What if I lose my money? Now this is a common fear. And certainly, let’s say you invested $1000 in the S&P 500 just before the financial crash in 2008 and then the markets crashed. So now your $1000 have suffered a loss.
So even if you had invested lots of money just before the 2008 financial crisis, if you had just stuck to your guns and left that money in there, you’d have doubled or tripled your money by now. Because overall the stock market broadly goes up over a long enough time horizon. It’s the same with house prices. You can buy a house and if you try and sell it next week then maybe the price will have gone down. But if you try and sell it 20 years from now, chances are that the price will go up, and the longer you can leave your money in these index funds or whatever, the more it compounds overtime.
Now lots consider you’re investing in the S&P 500, What are the chances that all 500 of the biggest companies in the US suddenly are going to drop to zero value overnight? 0%. If all 500 of the biggest companies in the US have their value dropped to zero and we’re going to have bigger problems in the world than the value of my stock market portfolio. The reason why it’s reasonable to act on this scale because over time the stock market goes up and because everyday thousands of people are going to work in each of these companies. Every single day. The employees at Apple are creating value. it depends on which platform you’re using, do some research and figure out the most reputable and legit platforms in your country and then you can invest based on that.
2. When should you invest in Real estate? Buying vs. Renting:
Now there’s two other categories of opportunities, people invest in real estate. Buying versus renting, and that’s usually outside the range for most people until you already made a lot of money to be able to afford a deposit on a house and get a mortgage and people also invest money in crypto. make sure the only money you’re putting into your crypto account is money that you can 100% afford to lose. Don’t try and think of investing in general or crypto as a get rich quick scheme, but generally if you want to invest your money in stocks and shares it’s pretty reasonable to put that money in a stock market index fund like the S&P 500, for example.
3. Powerful fast-lane investing
The alternative approach to building wealth. So far, we’ve talked about what some people would somewhat disparagingly call the slow lane approach to building wealth through the slow lane. The basic idea of slowly investing is that you’ve got some money, you’ll keep your day job, you’re going to save up 10% of Totally fine to invest in stock market index funds.
I do that as well. But there is another approach to investing and it’s worth talking about that here because when we hear investing, a lot of us just default to thinking, we should buy stocks and shares, or I guess I need to buy a house. But if we really think about it, what is the point of investing money? The point of investing money is for your existing money to make more money further down the line. That’s all the point is. The point is not to invest in Stocks and shares or a vehicle by which you can turn your money into more money further down the line.
When it comes to fast lane investing, fast lane investing is basically that instead of investing in someone else’s business. Like Apple or members of Google or whatever, you’re investing instead in yourself and in your own business. The S&P 500 goes up by 7% each year again on average. So, if I put $1000 into the S&P 500, it would be worth on average 1070 dollars twelve months from now.
And so, the question becomes, can I do something better with that $1000 to make more than $70 in the next 12 months? And generally, the answer is yes, there are kind of two things you could invest in. We fundamentally increase our own value to the market, you’ve increased your own ability to make money. This is why investing in your own education is important, other than that, you can find very reasonable free information on the Internet.
You invest in your own ability to make money. But the other way of fast lane investing is by investing in your own business. Obviously, this only applies if you have a business or you want to start a business, but generally the way to get rich quickly, as in the next 10 years rather than the next 70 years is to build your own business, and to increase the value of that business rather than giving your money to Apple or Tesla.
So, for example, if you wanted to, you could start your own coffee shop, or your own online business or your own YouTube channel, which is a business. If you wanted to, you could start your own web design agency or social media marketing agency.
You will get a significantly higher return investing in your own ability to make money than you will in any market. You should invest in the S&P 500. So. Should invest in yourself. Invest in your own skills, invest in your own ability to make money, invest in your own business because the returns on that are way more likely to be ridiculously higher than just that 7% that you get by investing in the S&P 500.
So if, for example, you are interested in investing in your education and you want to start a YouTube channel and really take it seriously and treat it like a business, everything is available on YouTube for free or you can check out a paid course if you like, but that won’t help you more than the free information you can get right now, without having to pay someone, so if you’re broke or if you don’t have much money you can always check out the free information on the internet. Then of course, you can start making some serious money.
4. Personalizing investments:
Now everyone’s goals and time horizon are very different regarding investing. Investing is extremely personal, right. So, when I used to be a financial advisor, one of the first things that we would ask our clients is, what’s their risk tolerance and how long do they want to be investing for? Are they the type that’s okay with big risks and big swings in your account or do you want to see it steadily grow over time?
And this is something that you should ask yourself before investing. We would say the index fund strategy is very good for beginner investors, that’s on the younger side. However, if you are nearing retirement, let’s say in five years, you might not want to invest in index funds because they could be too volatile for you. And the reason is simple, it’s that if you’re about to retire in five years, you need all the money that you can possibly get your hands on, so it doesn’t really make sense for you to risk your money in the market.
Now compare that to someone who’s 20 years old who has 45 years left to retirement. And that person might have a higher risk tolerance because they have more time to kind of mess with the system and learn more because even if they do mess up, they have more time to recover.
So, the basic gist here is that if you are earning A consistent income, you should be setting aside A portion of that income inconsistently investing overtime. Again, the average return from the market is typically around 8 to 10% a year in the S&P 500. But you can check for yourself the S&P 500 graph and see if there is any time it went to zero? Well, historically based on all the data, it probably will not go to zero.
Like for the stock market to go to zero. Basically, all hell has broken loose on planet earth and all our financial systems have collapsed. So, if the stock market were ever to go to 0, let’s say we would have way bigger problems than just the stock market being zero. Money would have no value at that point. However, let’s not rule it out, there is a slight chance it might happen. So, is that a realistic risk that you should be worried about? Probably not.
5. Make your money work for you!
So, let’s get into how we should invest. The first thing to understand about how to invest in the stock market is to understand that we can invest in various things. So, you can invest in companies, like investing in stocks. So, the better that a company does financially, the better your investment will do. You could also invest in real estate.
Now, all of these investments do carry risk. It can be pretty difficult if you’re beginner to figure out what actually to invest in. so investing in companies is the most common type of investment and also has the most predictable returns over a long period, anything over 10 years, but the longer that you hold on to your stocks and investments, the better.
And the S&P 500 is a great way to start as it won’t require you to invest in only a single company and research for which company performs the best. S&P 500 is known as the top 500 companies in the United States. What’s interesting here is that this S&P 500 first started back in 1983. And the general trend of the general direction is that it goes upward over time. Now sure there are some dips and there’s some valleys and, famously in 2008 the market kind of had this little crash and same in the 2000s.
So sometimes there are periods where if you don’t hold it long enough, you could lose money. So, for example, if you bought it in 2000, you sold the 2003. If you had held long enough, you would have lost money investing in the S&P 500. Historically, investing in the S&P 500 index typically returns between 8 to 10% a year.
Can you invest if you’re under 18?
Let’s discuss custodial accounts, which are extremely relevant if you are very young and trying to invest. If you are under eighteen and reading this, just know that you cannot open your own stock account by yourself. Instead, you’re going to have to open a custodial account, or rather your parents need to open a custodial account for you which will be owned all-time by the parents until you turn eighteen. You can withdraw money if it is used for the benefit of you, the minor. And then, as we mentioned earlier, this account will be passed into your control when you turn 18 years old so take this into notice and remember it for when you need it.
Conclusion
Saving money and then risking it to make more money is a difficult task to do, however you should know how to invest and how to save, you’ve already learned, if not then you should know it’s the priority. Learn how to save efficiently and you’ll be able to invest as soon as possible and then take advantage of the 8th wonder of the world, which is compounding interest. We have given you information about everything you needed to know about investing. From investing options, you have to the best one people take the most advantage of and then we instructed you on how to do so for yourself. We hope you got the information you were looking for and we wish you the best of luck in investing and having a safer future altogether.
FAQ’s:
Is investing 100$ enough for a beginner?
Investing 100$ is a great way of getting to know the market as a beginner but you will need to invest more money if you want to get good gains in the long term.
Tips for people who are beginners at investing?
Decide your investment goals before investing, measure your risk tolerance, and don’t invest more than that; build and monitor your portfolio and manage it well.
How can I grow money fast?
Invest your money in S&P 500, buy a rental property, buy dividend-paying stocks, and hold them.
How can I buy shares?
Buying shares and stocks in a company requires you to go through a third party mostly, this third party acts as a middleman of the process and both you and the company can trust this party; these parties are referred to as the “brokers”. The best one for you might depend on the area you live in, a quick Google might do the trick.
Can I buy 1 share?
There is no minimum investment for anyone to buy shares; you can buy at least one share per company and hold it according to your liking.
