I’ve only been investing seriously for about a year. So why am I qualified to write about this at all? Well, I would never call myself an investment expert, but I do have practical experience that only comes from doing. I’ve managed to make a handful of investments and gain some real money in just a year. So I’d like to share how I did it. I do this because I understand how intimidating it can be to start investing. You’re worried about making the wrong choices, losing money, or watching the stock market collapse right when you put your first money into it. While these concerns are real, they’re also exaggerated in the minds of most non-investors. I think that the best way to learn about investing is to simply start doing it. That’s the strategy I started with a year ago, anyway, and it has gotten me this far. Here’s how I did it.
- I Bought My House. This one was huge for me. I had to buy a very, run down house. I could have afforded a mortgage more than double the one I took out, but I wasn’t comfortable taking on that much debt, even though my mortgage lender would have let me. I was thrilled to find out that my monthly mortgage payment was less than I was paying in r
ent for the same-sized space. With appreciation on my property (increased by a nearby development) as well as improvements I’ve made inside, my house appreciated more than 20% in a single year! I don’t know if I’ll ever have another investment quite this good (your second home is not nearly as well subsidized as your first) but I’ll take it for now! - I Got an IRA. I didn’t get my first IRA till I was 28, which is inadvisably old for starting to invest in mutual funds. That’s not exactly true. Any time is a good time to start, but you’ll see more benefit if you give your money a long, long time to grow. I wish I had started when I was 18. But I didn’t. So today I’m making monthly contributions to get to my yearly contribution limit of $5,500. I think I picked the right mutual funds and ETFs because I’ve already seen some real growth in the little time I’ve had my money in this account.
- I Started using Forex. Forex Trading is really cool. It’s almost like a game, letting you make investments on how you think currencies are going to change in value over time. If you’re right, and the currency gains or loses a lot of value in your chosen direction, you’ll gain a lot of money. This ones tricky, because it’s risky and it’s easy for beginners to lose a lot of money quickly. But if you do your homework and practice, Forex can be one of the best investments you ever do, just like it has been for me.
These have been my main investments. I chose them carefully and I’m using what I learned to make more good investments in the future.
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