Investing Basics – What Are Your Investment Goals

Santri Alat - Investing Basics – What Are Your Investment Goals - When it comes to investing, many first time investors want to jump right in with both feet. Unfortunately, very few of those investors are successful. Investing in anything requires some degree of skill. It is important to remember that few investments are a sure thing  there is the risk of losing your money!

Before you jump right in, it is better to not only find out more about investing and how it all works, but also to determine what your goals are. What do you hope to achieve with your investments? Will you be funding a college education? Buying a home? Retiring? Before you invest a single penny, really think about what you hope to achieve with that investment. Knowing what your goal is will help you make smarter investment decisions along the way!

Too often, people invest money with dreams of becoming rich overnight. This is possible – but it is also rare. It is usually a very bad idea to start investing with hopes of becoming rich overnight. It is safer to invest your money in such a way that it will grow slowly over time, and be used for retirement or a child’s education. However, if your investment goal is to get rich quick, you should learn as much about high-yield, short term investing as you possibly can before you invest.

You should strongly consider talking to a financial planner before making any investments. Your financial planner can help you determine what type of investing you must do to reach the financial goals that you have set. He or she can give you realistic information as to what kind of returns you can expect and how long it will take to reach your specific goals.

Again, remember that investing requires more than calling a broker and telling them that you want to buy stocks or bonds. It takes a certain amount of research and knowledge about the market if you hope to invest successfully.

Figure Out Your Investment Goals

Our relationship with money starts at an early age when we notice family members exchanging coins or bills for all sorts of stuff we like. Money's power and authority grow when we get our first allowance or paid chore. These early experiences foster habits and beliefs that last throughout your life. Its challenges multiply as we approach adulthood and are encouraged to take loans to pay for college or buy a car.

Parental figures set the tone for investment goals early in life, teaching us to delay gratification until we can break the piggy bank, allowing those coins to buy video games, clothes or equipment. The intimate connection between investment and lifestyle grows more sophisticated as the years pass. The culmination of your working life is either a comfortable retirement – or a struggle to make ends meet.

How Life and Investment Goals Intersect

Investment goals spread into three branches, depending on age, income and outlook. Age can be further sub-divided into three distinct segments: young and starting out, middle aged and family building and old and self-directed. These classifications often miss their marks at the appropriate age, with middle-agers looking at investments for the first time or old folks forced to rigorously budget, exercising the discipline they lacked as young adults.

Income provides the natural starting point for investment goals because you can’t invest what you don’t have. The first career job issues a wake-up call for many young people, forcing decisions about 401(k) contributions, savings or money market accounts and lifestyle changes needed to balance growing affluence with delayed gratification. It’s common to experience setbacks during this period, getting stuck in overpriced home rental and car payments or forgetting that your guardians are no longer picking up the monthly credit card bill.

Outlook describes the playing field on which we operate during our lifetimes and the choices we make that impact wealth management. Family planning resides at the top of the list for most people, with couples deciding how many kids they want, their preferred neighborhoods and how many wage earners will be needed to match those goals. Career expectations dovetail into these calculations, with the highly educated ramping into years of increased earnings power while others are stuck in dead end jobs, forced to cut back to make ends meet.

Investment goals become moving targets for many individuals, with carefully laid-out plans running into roadblocks in the form of layoffs, unplanned pregnancies, health issues and the need to care for aging parents. Those unexpected challenges demand a dose of realism when choosing 401(k) allocations or deciding how to spend a year-end bonus, with the old axiom “saving for a rainy day” ignored by many folks until it’s too late.

Fortunately, it’s never too late to become an investor. You may be in your 40s before realizing that life is moving more quickly than expected, requiring contemplation about retirement. Fear can dominate your thinking if you wait this long to set investment goals, but that‘s OK if it adds a sense of urgency to wealth management. All investments start with the first dollar set aside for that purpose, whatever your age, income, or outlook. Of course, those investing for decades hold a major advantage, while their growing wealth allows them to enjoy the fruits of their saving habits.