Overcoming the fear of investing

Investing is the most important element of our financial future — but sometimes it takes a while before we really get it, so to speak.

Biggest success factor: Pull the trigger

There are many reasons why investing believers have not turned into investing doers. These two come immediately to mind:

·         They don’t think they have enough money.

·         They have fears about inflation or other extraneous factors they can’t control, and so forth.

Those reasons may sound valid, but no matter how valid the reasons sound, they still don’t remove the simple fact that, if you don’t invest now (and you continue not to invest), you will discover somewhere down the road that retirement is not an option for you.

Action reinforces action

The biggest single factor for your future financial well-being is simply to start investing. The human mind is wired in such a way that, once we begin with something, we acquire an emotional attachment to it , and we will make significant sacrifices to keep that thing going, whatever it is. It may be allegiance to a political party or figure, a cause, or values like eating correctly, respecting the environment, and, of course, getting rich slowly.

Our minds will continuously reinforce the positions we take: the people who don’t invest might nod their heads sagely and agree that investing is essential to their future financial health … and continue on without investing.

How do you break the inaction mindset?

The key to success, therefore,  is to simply break the bad habit/mindset and replace it with the healthier one. The biggest thing holding people back from getting started on their investing careers is very simple: They just don’t know how to get started.

To get started, you need  two things:

1. Knowledge

The more you learn about any subject, from exercise to investing, the less intimidating it becomes. More knowledge also adds mental ammunition to take the jump and stay on course, all the way to retirement. Also, the more knowledge you have, the more assurance you will feel that you’re not making obvious mistakes. There are many resources, free and paid, to learn more about investing.

2. Simply setting aside money

Interviews with people who successfully turned their financial lives around show that success started with scaling back our lifestyles and making a simple, yet firm, decision to set aside money for the future. It’s like the old Nike ad: JUST DO IT

Making the decision to cut back is the hard part. Once you have done that, you get to the choice of where to put that money you set aside each month.

Play to your strengths

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to investing, whether it be for retirement or any other future purpose. The point is: Figure out who you are and what you’re comfortable with, and go with that. Consider all the options and pick one or two investments that resonate with you.

Future flexibility

One of the beauties of investing, too, is that you are never locked in. You can change your allocations to include more savings. When you invest, you’re never locked in. You can always change as you go along and learn more.

But you’ll never have that flexibility if you have nothing invested.

There is no way you will enjoyretirement or financial freedom later in your life if you don’t invest.