{"id":245708,"date":"2012-01-24T04:00:30","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/?p=245708"},"modified":"2023-09-21T15:01:57","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T21:01:57","slug":"get-started-investing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/get-started-investing\/","title":{"rendered":"How do I get started with investing?"},"content":{"rendered":"
How do I get started investing? <\/em>is a question much like, What should I do once I graduate high school?<\/em> In both cases, the answer very much depends on where you are in life; and where you are going. Just as a future doctor might take biology and chemistry at an Ivy League school, someone bent on a life as a French chef might want to work in a kitchen in Dijon. Let’s look at a few paths:<\/p>\n You are in your 20s, setting out into a career, and your schooling is over. You work for a medium- or large-sized company.<\/p>\n You are in your 20s or 30s, and you don’t work a “normal” job–no cost-of-living raises, no automatic retirement savings plans.<\/p>\n You’ve made some mistakes in your financial life, or purposefully put off saving and investing. Now you’re in the middle of your life and you don’t know where to start. If you’ve already got your savings building, you’re making the foundation for a good financial future.<\/p>\n Here’s the bottom line on investing, though: make sure you invest<\/strong>. I ran the 401(k) program at a very small company years ago. I was the only one who ever went to the rather simple step of electing an investment (which you can’t typically do until after your first contribution hits the account–as frequently as every pay check, or as seldom as quarterly).<\/p>\n Even if you put everything in an index fund or conservative bond fund, at least it’s a better average return than the money market fund that is the default for most plans. And most importantly, money you spend today can’t be invested in anything, so any money saved for tomorrow benefits the future you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How do I get started investing? <\/em>is a question much like, What should I do once I graduate high school?<\/em> In both cases, the answer very much depends on where you are in life; and where you are going. Just as a future doctor might take biology and chemistry at an Ivy League school, someone bent on a life as a French chef might want to work in a kitchen in Dijon. Let’s look at a few paths:<\/p>\n You are in your 20s, setting out into a career, and your schooling is over. You work for a medium- or large-sized company.<\/p>\n You are in your 20s or 30s, and you don’t work a “normal” job–no cost-of-living raises, no automatic retirement savings plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3092,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[492],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span>The young careerist<\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/span>The artist, freelancer or entrepreneur<\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/span>The mid-life financial born again<\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/span>The bottom line<\/span><\/h2>\n
The young careerist<\/h2>\n
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The artist, freelancer or entrepreneur<\/h2>\n