You know that one friend who always has money? The one who pays for your meals if you both eat out, and who always keeps up with the latest cool fashions? You’ve tried for so long to figure out where all that money comes from. One clue is that your friend is always on his Crackberry, yapping to someone about “current yields” and “blue chip stocks” and “buy buy buy, sell sell sell.” When you ask your friend what he’s doing, he just looks at you with an annoyed expression and says “Excuse me, I’m investing with my broker. I wish I could explain it to you, but my time is an appreciating asset, and you’re depreciating my intelligence.” Mean guy, but he does buy you meals!But why does your friend get to act like a snob and have all that money? You should be able to invest too! All you have to do is, um, um. Hmm. How do you invest anyway? You know it involves a lot of scrolling numbers you see on cable news shows, and it involves a lot of guys yelling at each other on Wall Street. But how hard could it be, right? Er, it’s a lot harder than you think. Fortunately, we’re here to give you a clue.

At the heart of it, investing means using the money you have available to you to make more money.  Sounds pretty good right?  Well, it’s trickier than you think because there are so many different ways to help your money grow.  This includes putting money into:

• bank products like money market or CDs,
• the stock market via stocks, bonds, mutual funds,
• real estate (yes, a house is an investment),
• or starting your own business (stay away from these crazies!)

No matter how much and what you invest your money into, the goal ultimately is to put the current money you have set aside for investing, so it can grow.  Leave the fancy stuff to the professionals, who spend entire careers learning their niche and still struggle.

Investing can be absolutely rewarding both financially and intellectually, but you need to take the right steps before starting.  That means first getting your own financial house in order, thinking about your investment goals, how much and how long you want to put your money into the investing game and how much risk you are willing to take in order to achieve your investment goals.

We here at financialfootprint are focused on helping you understand a bit more about the world of investing, so feel free to schedule time with your personal finance guide to talk through some of the things to think about before starting.  Keep in mind though, we are not here to make decisions for you and tell you what to do when it comes to investing your money.  Ultimately the choice is yours. We just want to be there to guide you along the way.

Are you curious about what it takes to play with the Wall Street fat cats? Learn the basics if you’re a first time investor, and how to open a brokerage account. Maybe you’re already trying to throw around investing terms and practicing hand signals in the mirror, waiting for your chance to get on the stock market floor. In that case, you want to check out everything there is to know about stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Of course, your personal finance guide is always here if you start getting hand cramps.