New to Investing Where to Start?

The Clueless Newbie Investor

So you just got home from work. So tired of all the hassle you encountered in traffic today that you even have no energy to change your clothes. You say to yourself, "Just a minute of rest." Then you turn on the TV, turn to the news and realized that the stock market is doing good. Businessmen earning millions of money for just a little time at work. While you, breaking your neck to earn just a little money that's just enough to get you by.

You then realized, you can't do this forever. I mean, if you love your job then that's good. But what about the people who don't love their job? Like 90% of the people in the world. Its like hell. Torturing you everyday so that at night you could rest and torture you the next day. It has to stop.

You want to be in control of your life. Doing things you want to do anytime, anywhere. And getting a business degree now would mean giving up your work. your family might be depending on you to bring home the bacon and that's a problem. So what now?

You can not work forever...

Well, you don't have to worry. Because the true beginning of investing is realizing that you can not work forever. A few of our ancestors have realized this fact. But our parent's upbringing might have been overprotective and wants us to be safe.

What do I mean by that? If you look into the not so distant past. There have been a lot of people who became rich, financially free without having their own business or a business degree. But they learned investing. They bought companies. Our parent's just wants us to have a "safe" future and ingrained us with the knowledge that doing good work means good future that is the industrial age (where being industrious is a virtue). But that will be proven wrong as we go into information age where information is power.

Knowing that you can't work forever is the start. The enlightenment. And doing some simple math, you'll also realize that no matter how hard you work, you can not outwork money that is invested in the right place. Work therefore is useless after you have enough money to make it work for you. You then realize that time is more important than money. It is nirvana. You'll realized that time will be better spent on things that would make you happy.

Before we go into that happiness and stuff, we have to know how to invest. So where do we start? If I'm employed, depending on my paycheck, for my needs. Then I don't have much choice but to suck it up and be good at work. But the thing is you can start investing even you know nothing about it. The first option is investing in mutual funds. A Mutual Fund is a pool of money from small investors gathered together to purchase a stock. In other words, you invest in a company with other people, in which you wouldn't have been able to, if you only have your money or necessary knowledge in investing. A Mutual Fund is managed by a financial manager who does the investing for you. This is a good start in investing.

Your goal is to have control of your finances, that is, learning how to invest yourself is the best gift you could ever give yourself. Mutual fund gives you the opportunity to invest while you learn to do so.

Now you'll realize why your parents wants you on the safe side of being good at your job. If you'll notice, there's no risk involve in having a stable job. The risk is apparent in investing. You can lose money if the market or the company went under. You have to realize that investing and risk goes hand in hand. And freedom can not be attained without sacrifice. Just like our ancestors did.

Here's the thing, in the short term, investing involves more risk than a stable job. You can lose money in investing while a job continues to provide you money each month for the work you done. But in the long term, a job is riskier than investing. A person not loving his job will suffer depression. A recession can make you lose your job. But while these happen in the long term, investing on the other hand provides you with different income streams that will fill your pockets with money passively. Should recession or job layoffs come, investing will take care of  you.

Remember that investing is applied knowledge. The more you know about investing, the better your chances are at being financially free early in life. The key thing is to know what you don't know and have the courage to stare at that weakness in the face. Learn to spot what is correct and false in the knowledge you seek. Because just like a job sucks your life energy, there are a people who would also do anything, say anything to get your money, your buy out to freedom. Educate yourself and you'll be immune to those. Unknown field such as investing could be scary. But take it one step at a time.