Young Brits getting ready to enter the world of retirement investing are often overwhelmed by the seemingly endless pool of investment products. They can choose from mutual funds, stocks, bonds and ETFs as well as other investment products. With so many options, what’s the wisest choice? And how do you learn enough to begin?
Never Put Off to Tomorrow What You Can Do Today
One of the biggest issues young Brits—as well as millennials around the globe—seem to face is the age-old dilemma of procrastination. It’s tempting to spend all your free time with friends, social media, watching sports, etc., and put investing on the on the proverbial back burner. Why bother investing now? There will be plenty of time tomorrow, right? Wrong!
One of the guiding principles of investment strategies is to give your portfolio time to grow. Letting your investments ‘roll’ over a longer period of time is key to accumulating wealth. The longer investments roll, the larger their net worth. When it comes to investing, there’s no better time to get started than the present. Invest today for spending power tomorrow!
Think of it this way: investing is much like choosing a new set of earbuds for your mobile device. When the ones you have are broken, any earbuds are better than none. Without them, you cannot hear your music, right? In this case, “good is as good as great” because the merely decent earbuds still enable you to hear. So it can be with retirement investing: Rather than wasting time procrastinating over which investment is ‘best’, you should just jump in and get your feet wet now with smaller options. Then, as these smaller options grow, you can begin to look at better investment products.
Start With Some Basic Education and a Small Investment
If you want to begin investing with as little as £100, all you need to do is look for a single share of an ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) and consider buying a decent book on beginner’s investment terminology and strategies. This compilation is a good place to start and will help you learn common investment terms and teach you the basic mechanics of investing. You can also find many free investment guides online—just make sure you select ones from a reputable source.
Even if you only end up buying just one share of a company-traded on the world stock ETF, you can count yourself amongst the proud investors who own a small piece of the pie. With over 5300 different stocks to choose from on the world market, there are plenty of choices.
Continue to Learn and Grow as an Investor
You’ve started small and that’s okay. Here, however, it is necessary to continue learning as much as you can. Your initial investment will provide you with the ‘hands-on’ tool you can work with whilst you gather more and more knowledge. If you have more than £100 to invest, investment-learning tools will help you choose a broader range of products that fit the investment style you are learning about.
No matter how large or how small your initial investment is, the key is to continue learning as you go. Yes, you can start small today as a young millennial, but do not put off until tomorrow what you should be investing today. It is by far better to invest a little now that will grow as you go than to procrastinate thinking tomorrow will provide all the opportunity you need. Today’s investment is tomorrow’s spending power and that is the biggest lesson you can learn about the world of investing.
