Why do people want to learn about investment tips? Well, there are a bunch of different reasons. For some, it is a way to earn a passive income that enhances their working income.
For others, it is to build a better nest egg for retirement. And some people just want to get rich!
No matter what phase of your life you are in, it’s never too late to start investing for the first time (and I do mean that literally.
But the sooner you start learning about investment ideas the better it will be to earn a passive income.
One of the most common reasons people make the decision to invest is that their friends tell them how great their own investments are going and suggest they give it a try. WARNING!
It’s important that you don’t follow their example and invest your money in the same way ‘just because it worked for Great-Uncle Bob’. But you already knew that, right?
That’s why you’re reading this article on investment tips to earn a passive income and start saving money.
You already KNOW that you are a special case, and that your money and how you grow it deserves SPECIAL ATTENTION.
So before you do anything else, take some time with me now to think about the real reasons you want to invest your money.
This will help you determine what types of investments you should make, how much money you should invest – and ultimately, how much you’ll make!
Here are 9 successful investment tips to earn a passive income and become financially free.
Investment Tip #1 – Decide How Much You Want!
Sounds obvious, right? ‘I want as much as I can get!’ But hold your horses there, cowboy although you might think you want to be a millionaire, the truth is that we all have different levels of affluence that motivate us in different ways.
For example, while some people might be highly motivated to make enough money to roll in, they get that way because they’re willing to do what it takes – which usually includes a fair amount of hard planning, a fair amount of hard work, and plenty of shoulder-rubbing with other ‘business types’ to earn it.
But other people (myself included) are happier to earn a bit less but spend less energy and time getting it.
So figure out what works for YOU.
TIP: Many people find themselves happiest just having enough money to live debt-free.
For most, this will mean earning what’s called a ‘passive income’ in addition to (or in place of) a standard income.
Passive income is any money you make without having to work for it – in other words, your money is working for you rather than the other way around.
This is a major gift from the gods (or, another way of looking at it, from your broker or, if you get really smart about investing, from YOURSELF!)
Think about it: Earning a passive income means you get money from doing NOTHING. With enough passive income you don’t even have to WORK any more.
Clearly, this is a big draw! What many people really desire from a passive income is to get rid of the stress of worrying about money.
They want to be able to live comfortably without the threat of debt or bankruptcy.
So what do YOU want? Do you want a retirement ‘nest egg’? Do you want extra money each week to help pay the bills? Do you want to retire early (as in, this time next year)?
Or do you want to GET RICH earning a passive income?
Think carefully about this, and only go for the option you really want.
(Tip: the more money you want to make from this, the more energy and enthusiasm you’ll need because you’ll need to work a bit harder to get it!)
Investment Tip #2 - Decide When You Want It (Realistically)
Your goals will establish how much money you want to accumulate.
They will also establish how much time you’re going to give yourself to MAKE that money. Hint: be realistic.
Obviously we’d all like a cool million by tomorrow night, but the whole point of these goals is to map out your future in such a way that it will actually happen. Get it?
If you don’t believe, deep down, that this can really happen for you, you won’t work hard enough to MAKE it happen.
This is why you need to choose a timeframe that seems realistic to you.
So be cautious … but not fearful. Another reason why you’re thinking about time: your timeframes will determine what type of investment you want to make – and how ‘risky’ that investment should be.
(Large returns generally mean larger risks, as a general rule. In other words, to make the big bucks, you’ve generally have to play a bit more hardball than someone who merely want to support themselves through old age.)
For example, if you aren’t in any hurry and you want a significant return on your investment, you might invest in real estate.
You can sit on a piece of property until the market improves and then sell it to make a profit.
On the other hand, if you want to start earning a passive income as soon as possible without investing a lot of money, you’ll want to consider something like trading.
(This is a smaller version of the futures trading market. It requires a lower investment and moves very quickly – which is good news, because you can earn more for less capital up-front.)
Just remember: as a general rule, the more money you stand to make and the faster you stand to get it, the bigger the risk.
(However, I’ll give you a few ways you might be able to break that rule shortly!)
Investment Tip #3 - Learn What Works.
No matter how much you trust your broker, you should NEVER trust him one hundred percent.
Okay, that’s kind of a crass way of saying what I’m trying to say, which is basically this: your financial future should NEVER rest one hundred percent on someone else’s shoulders.
That would be like buying a business and then letting the customers run it for you.
In other words: KUH-RAAAAZY. If you get smart and wise up about what works, money-wise, you don’t need to depend on someone else.
That means you can be more INDEPENDENT with your own money. You don’t have to take someone else’s word for how things stand.
Also, you’ll never have to get one of those phone-calls at 3 am from your broker – YOU know the kind I’m talking about.
The kind where you wake up with your heart pounding, and the next thing you know the little voice is telling you ‘the bubble’s burst, mister. It’s all over.’
If you learn about what investment ideas work, you can handle your OWN money – and probably better than most brokers, who (truth be told) tend to all use the same algorithms and make the same conservative decisions anyway.
When it comes to money, I insist on learning from the best. My favorite source of money-making gems is a book called The Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki.
This is now required reading as far as you’re concerned; it’ll make everything much easier as far as strategy and handling techniques go.
But don’t just take my word for it. Figure out what sounds good to YOU. Figure out which gurus YOU want to listen to.
Make research a priority. Make financial independence a priority. It will only come with knowledge – and when the student is ready, the teacher appears.
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Investment Tip #4 - Use Someone Smarter Than You.
Okay, don’t get confused. I just said you should educate yourself so you don’t need a broker, right? WRONG. Guess what? You still need a broker! Brokers play a definite role in investment banking.
At the very least, they’ll do all the shuffle-work for you – calling up the ‘electric doughnuts’ to place orders, keeping tabs on the economy’s pulse, and other daily stuff you don’t want to be bothered with.
HOWEVER. Employing a good one does take some sagacity – as you will soon find out.
For now, education-wise, your first goal is to know enough about money so that you can find a broker smart enough to help you attract a lot of money.
I also want you to know enough so you can question their decisions and take more of a front-seat role in handling your own fortune should it come to that. (And it probably will, at some point.)
Eventually, you will know enough about money that you won’t need one any more.
But starting off without a broker is sheer nonsense. It’s tomfoolery. It’s gibberish. It’s rubbish. It’s pure idiocy okay, you get the idea.
Just don’t get me started on stupid ideas like that or I can go on for a WHILE.
Here’s why you need one: because you need someone to protect you while you’re still learning which way is up.
Investment Tip #5 - Reduce Your Risk, Make More Dough.
All investments are risky. Never go into an investment with the idea that your money is completely safe and that you will always end up with more than you started.
Even the most solid investments can and do go awry. Investing – even the safest kind – is basically legalized gambling: you look at an opportunity and make a bet that things will turn out in a certain way.
If you’re right, you’ll make money. If you’re wrong, you’ll lose.
The bigger the risk, the more you stand to make if you’re right - or lose if it goes wrong.
Be careful! Which means only invest money you can afford to lose. If you’re investing your rent money or grocery fund, you’re in big trouble, buddy.
Here’s a powerful investment idea to protect your dosh when (yes, WHEN) things don’t go as planned.
#1. Save the money you are going to invest. Setting aside a certain amount of your paycheck each pay period will quickly add up.
With most investments, you really don’t need to start with a large amount of cash – some starter portfolios allow you to inject a smallish lump of cash at the start and then ‘top up’ with an ongoing trickle with each paycheck.
This might work for you if you don’t have large wads of cash just sitting around waiting to be invested (who does?)
#2. Get insurance for your assets – never rely on your investments to ‘help make ends meet’ or as insurance in themselves. Get serious: investing is like gambling.
You have to realize, it might not work – that you have to be smart about this and plan for failure.
NOTE: This tip is especially important for those investors who are cash-poor (i.e. the more you’re relying on your investments for income, the more you need that insurance)!
#3. Don’t fall for the ‘dummy tip’ that diversifying your portfolio is best. This is what most brokers tell first-time investors because, well, it’s just easier that way (and less work for them.)
What’s actually smarter is to get really familiar with just one or two areas and then put your money in those ones exclusively.
Here’s why this is better than diversifying:
Diversifying isn’t actually particularly safe. If the stock market crashes – as it does with terrifying regularity – most people get WIPED OUT, whether they diversified or not. Why?
Because they didn’t realize that when a bubble bursts, it takes EVERYTHING down, regardless of how ‘diverse’ your portfolio is – and because with a gigantic diverse portfolio, most people don’t know enough about each option to really take care of it in challenging times.
They spread themselves too thin, and they lose it all.
Focusing your energy and vibration on getting really, really familiar with one or two investment options allows you to play ‘ahead of the game’.
If there’s a crash, you’ll know whether to pull out or invest more – and you’ll be able to do it with kid gloves, because you’ve done your due diligence and saved up your knowledge for a rainy day. Expertise is what pays off here: it’s all about quality, not quantity.
#4. If you’re unsure of what to invest in, gold and silver are the safest things to invest in EVER. They consistently rise in value, they are a solid tangible asset, and there is no real risk.
Just make sure you invest in actual, real-life-nugget-of-gold-can-hold-it-in-the palm-of-my-hand gold and silver, not just the shares for these assets (shares can go up and down in value, meaning they’re risky) and that they’re in a vault somewhere, not collecting dust under your bed!
#5. Be wary of real estate. It’s an excellent option as long as you invest for the long term – people who buy a cheap property, ‘do it up’ and then try to sell it the next year for a quick profit are often disappointed unless they really know what they’re doing.
Buying houses to rent out is a safer way to go (there’s always a rental market, no matter what the property market’s doing) but again, you must know what you’re doing: most people overestimate how much rent they’ll get as the landlords and underestimate how much they’ll need to spend on utilities and maintenance, and get stuck with paying part of a second or third mortgage for the foreseeable future.
Know the area you’re buying in and what rental rates are – and leave yourself a safety margin just in case.
Investment Tip #6 - Get Familiar with Google Finance.
Once you have learned the basics regarding the different types of investments, it’s time to advance to the next level – ongoing updates via the information superhighway!
Investors of all levels have come to rely on the up-to-date information they get from Google Finance.
This service even allows you to create your own portfolio using the featured tools and you can have emails sent to your mailbox with all of the current happenings that pertain to your investment portfolio.
Follow the news to see what changes are taking place and what steps you might need to take in order to secure your investments.
Investment Tip #7 - Watch Out for Mutual Funds!
Mutual funds are often held up to first-time investors as a kind of ‘Shangri-La’ of free money: ‘they’re low risk – low return, of course, but perfect for retirement investing!’
Actually, this is nothing but what I call an iceberg-truth: you can see the tip of it, but 90% of the truth is still underwater (and about to put a great big hole in your ship!)
The WHOLE truth is that mutual funds are something of a dinosaur as far as first-time investors go: slow-moving but scary.
Here’s why. I believe (and I’m by no means alone here) that mutual funds are in reality higher risk than many other types of investment, as you – the investor – have much less control over the stock and are truly vulnerable to market crashes (a point made well by Kiyosaki in Cashflow Quadrant.)
Look at it this way. If your retirement portfolio consists of mutual funds, and there’s a crash, you’re wiped out. That’s your retirement money gone.
Of course, if you’re vulnerable to a crash then it’s gone anyway – but my point is that if you’ve take my advice and invested in gold, silver, and/or real estate, and/or invest in one or two areas that you know very well … … well enough to handle scary scenes like market crashes when they do occur.
You’ll be much better off than if you’d simply invested in ‘safe’ mutual funds which are, in reality, going to leave you in a hole during the next lean year.
Investment Tip #8 - Don’t Worry About Loyalty.
When it comes to investment tips, it’s like the college girls say: ‘slutty is good.’ I want you to get to know as many different sources as you possibly can – now is not the time to worry about loyalty!
You should frequent a variety of websites to keep up with the ups and downs that occur in the market every day. Consider networking with ‘finance types’: brokers, bankers, and financiers.
Make some contacts if you can bear the breakfast chit-chat. Over time, you will develop an understanding of how world events affect the stock market.
By staying informed, you will know when to take appropriate action in order to protect or make the most of your investments.
Investment Tip #9 - Do It Now To Earn a Passive Income!
One of the biggest reasons that many people don’t have as much money as they’d like to send their children to college or provide a comfortable nest egg when they retire is because they never take that first step towards investing.
The sooner you start, the better! Every day that you wait to learn about investing, establish your goals, or make your first trade, is a day that you’re money isn’t working for you.
If your fear of the unknown has prevented you from taking control of your financial future, then follow the investment ideas below.
- Consider your financial needs and your desired time frame in order to create a plan with realistic goals.
- Find a qualified broker with credentials that has an approach to investing that fits your needs.
- Take steps to reduce your risk such as saving the money you invest and using insurance to protect your assets in case something goes wrong.
- Get educated on how the stock market works so that you can take control of your investments and make informed decisions about your portfolio. . Take advantage of all the resources available to you. Understand how your investments are working for you and know when you need to make changes
- Get started today! Instead of joining the group of individuals that never took that first step, join the large number of investors who decided to take control of their financial future and reach their goals
It’s up to you to take the necessary steps towards financial freedom.
Once you do, you can free yourself from the anxiety of never having enough money – and embrace the lifestyle that comes with ‘rolling in it’!
I will stop here. If you loved reading this powerful guide on investment tips to earn a passive income please do not forget to share and comment your thoughts on this.
