There’s a misnomer that we need all the information to start something. Information is good, but you don’t need to know everything right from the start. This pertains to money— you don’t need all the information to start being good with it.
Gather Enough Info to Start
Here’s what I recommend to avoid the whole not starting thing/fear of not having enough info–get just enough information to get started.
For example, learn what an emergency fund is and then start adding money every month. You basically need to know two things to get started. Number one, you need to know what an emergency fund is. The second thing is just opening a high-yield savings account.
That’s it to get started. As you go, you may choose to optimize the savings account, change your allocation amount, adjust the number of months you want to have saved, etc. But you don’t need to know all that to get started.
Investing
What about investing? Don’t you need to know all about investing before starting? No.
Arguably, the biggest key to investing is time in the market. The more time in the market, the more opportunity for compound interest to work its magic.
It’s much better for someone to just start investing so they can allow time to work for them. If you’re worried about not making the right investments, you can figure it out as you go. Make an investment and then read a book about how to invest or read a few blog posts.
That will be enough to start, and you can get into the more advanced aspects of investing as you start rolling. A great couple books to start with are The Simple Path to Wealth and The Automatic Millionaire.
I’m confident that after you read these two books, you’ll have a good idea about how to invest.
Learn As You Go
As you continue your money journey, you will learn as you go. That’s how it’s supposed to work, nobody is expected to know everything before starting to make good decisions about money.
There’s the analogy that on your way to work, you don’t know all the stoplights that will be green. As you drive, you’ll hit the green lights, and you’ll hit some red lights that eventually will turn green as you wait.
Same thing for money—you’re going to hit some green lights, red lights, and some yellow ones as well. Keep going and learning and you’ll do very well.
Were/are you intimidated by money and all the decisions that come with it?
