Your Investments | Simple Success Podcast

We're focused on your investing. First, investing at all, which is not necessarily the same thing as trading, but also on your rate of investing, which will be both repeated and methodical. That's our gold standard.

Oh, and not to mention patiently, carefully, and successfully.

Specifically, though "what are your investments?" and I'm not looking for individual answers but rather "what is the general idea?".

There are different types of investments. Your investments are anything where you expect to get back more than you put in.

Your Investments

You make an initial investment and future contributions because you have enough confidence that the thing in which you have invested will demand a higher price, reducing the levels of risk involved.

For example: Imagine that you have a job. You're not putting money into that job, but you are putting in your time and effort...your labor and you're valuing that contribution, your contribution, at a dollar amount. Like $10 or $15 or $20 dollars (US) per hour.

That's one of your possible investment options.

In the kind I'm focusing on, you ARE putting in money, but, and this is very important, you are NOT putting in your time and effort - not much anyway, not unless you are day-trading.

The same is true with any kind of investment objectives or investment strategy - to be fair we most commonly think of financial investments as putting up a dollar and getting back a dollar or probably more than a dollar.

There are investments that simply return us some sort of added enjoyment for which we are willing to lose money.

I think of gambling or the lottery when those things come to mind, for which we have decided to be willing to make the necessary exchange.

At a very simple level: Many of us have had experiences with a savings account.

At a very complex level is the Charitable Remainder Trust.

There are historically simple concepts and historically difficult concepts.

Somewhere in between the two is taking concepts as they come up and, if they are not already simple, or even if we think they are, make them even simpler.

What other kind of investments, might you have? Stock funds comes to mind. Bonds, and we'll get into what bonds are, mutual funds, money market funds, exchange-traded funds or ETFs, your home, rental real estate that you own and rent for income or for growth, commercial real estate, cryptocurrency, gold, and it goes on.

And those are just the physical options, which are often called securities. Wealth, in general, follows this same pattern, and even wealth can exceed our first thoughts.

It can certainly be financial, but it doesn't have to be. Wealth is a valid concept in careers, family, personal health, and many other places.

The options are, well technically not endless, but pretty close.

It's important to get it firmly implanted in your mind that I'm not just talking about stock, sometimes referred to as equities. I'm not just talking about bonds or bond funds. I'm not just talking about mutual funds. I'm not here to prescribe the right answer for you just because it was right for someone else.

Having a good balance is important in many areas in order to have a good comfort level, this one included.

How we overcome

How do we overcome our concerns? How do we get past it?

How do we do what we need to do? How can we be sure that our investment portfolios include the kind of selection of investments or investment products are the right ones for us? How do we know they will help us reach our financial goals?

We start small. We work our way up.

I've said this before, I'll say it again and I'll say it again some more.

Don't shock the system.

Start small.

It's totally fine to decide, in 30 years we need to have grown by X amount.

But it's not fine to push that off down the road because we made it so big and overwhelming to start with.

Start with something small.

Let me give you an example:

I frame that question, the one in which I need to have accumulated X amount of growth over 30 years by translating it into a different question and looking at it a different way, such as this:

To achieve that goal, I need to earn an average return on investment or R. O. I. every year.

How do I break that down and make that so it's not a shock to the system?

It's not as easy as just saying "I need to start tomorrow investing a thousand dollars a day for the next 30 years"...

That's not sustainable.

It might sound good to start and it might be good, and it might be right.

But we're going to start small so that it also stays feeling good.

We're going to get that same return on investment but with a very very small starting number.

What I want you to realize is that you are getting exactly the same annual rate of return but with a much smaller level of risk.

This is something that you can manage comfortably in your mind from day one. Think of it like setting another one of your profiles.

Sure, your reward will be small, but risk and reward go hand-in-hand. There's a balance to be struck. If you want to search for big rewards and get big payments, you will have to first become comfortable with big risk.

We'll get to big reward later as soon as you're OK with a big investment risk.

We’re changing the way we look at things, and

Remember, “THAT’S GOOD”.

Also remember, this is Financial Life Coaching from A Happiness Perspective! Coaching Happiness.

Again, the call to action here is to start small.

Take action on getting a return on investment for yourself, for your future, for your family, for your charity, or whatever is important to you take action.

Right now.

Before the end of the day.

If you need to cut out time and put it on your calendar that's fine.

I'll wait.

Just have exposure.

None of us need an investment adviser to help with this, and I can say that because I used to be one!

Take action even if small.

Any action. It doesn't matter if you're college age or if you're just around the corner from retirement. Your retirement nest egg is critical to your future choices, that's no lie, but that doesn't mean that you need to be so focused on the results that you end up with "analysis paralysis".

Any action that you take is a gigantic action, as long as it is action.

Don't worry, you'll get to diversified investments in the somewhere in the future.

There isn't one and only one right way, as far as I'm concerned, except for the way of actually doing it.

This is what you're going to have to do when you commit to this full-time, but you'll be so glad you did.