How To Invest With Confidence
So… you’re out of school, maybe working to pay off your student loans, and you’re starting to feel the pressure to invest for the long-term. Regardless of the age you want to become financially independent, the earlier you start investing, the better off you could be!
In a recent survey conducted by Visual Capitalist and Morning Brew, they found that 89% of Millennials (ages 18 - 35) are investing, but only 18% of them have confidence in their investing savvy. Talk about a disconnect!
This means 82% of investing Millennials are investing their hard-earned money without any confidence in the performance of their savings long-term!
The majority of Millennials who are picking their investments themselves use “online research” as a key tool for choosing stocks. The Information Age brings us a world where every answer is at our fingertips… but how do we know if that “answer” is a good one for us?
Here are just a few tips to start investing with confidence:
Good Data
Before you invest in something, you need to understand it. Period. One of the best ways to be confident about the information you have on an investment is to vet the source. That’s why we look to information and strategies that are rooted in academic research.
Spread it Out
We would not recommend putting all of your eggs in one basket… i.e. don’t put all of your savings into one stock. Diversifying your investment portfolio is one of the keys to reducing risk over the long-term. Mutual funds are a great way to accomplish this.
Talk to Others
It can be extremely valuable to get a second opinion on big investment decisions you’re making. And when we say “talk to others”… we don’t mean just anybody… we mean a professional. When it comes to trusting someone’s advice for how to invest your hard-earned cash… talk to someone who is a fiduciary (meaning they MUST put your interests above their own, 100% of the time).
Are these three tips the key to overwhelming financial success? Not exactly.
But they are incredibly important guidelines for how you can start investing with confidence.