Start Investing Your Money

Should you start investing your money? You may be intimidated by the stock market and concerned whether the whole thing is a scam. You may be wondering if it’s realistic to expect to make money from investing. This question is really only hard for people who have a very narrow definition of investing. Ultimately you should be investing every cent you can, but not necessarily in the ways you think.

What Is Investing?

So before we really answer whether you should be investing, we need to define the term. The reason we know that you need to be investing your money is because the only definition of an investment is the act of making your money work for you. Most people think that the stock market is the only way to invest your money, but it’s just one of many options. You could invest millions of dollars without ever buying a stock.

What ISN’T Investing?

Sadly, most of the things we do with our money aren’t investing. Buying a car is not an investment, at least most of the time. Almost invariably a car is going to lose value, so the more money you spend on a car; the less your money is working for you. Putting your money in a mattress is generally better than buying a car, yet most of us put a lot more towards our cars than we do our investments. 

Even worse are consumer goods like televisions that lose almost all of their value instantly and don’t serve any purpose. At least a car provides a vital function in your life; a giant television is mostly for show and entertainment. Ultimately however, neither of these is a good investment and you should try to minimize the amount you spend on purchases like this.

Start Investing NOW

The sooner you start making your money work for you, the more money it will make for you. Every time you run up your credit cards or over-consume, you’re just putting off financial security that much longer. There are thousands of ways to invest your money and figuring out which way is the best is an important task. An even more important task is avoiding the millions of ways not to invest your money.