You’ve probably thought to yourself on a number of occasions, ‘I really should have started that sooner…’ Having the ability to take your time with things can feel like a luxury sometimes, but it shouldn’t, because time management is actually a huge part of self-care, and when it comes to money management, it’s just good practice.
In 2018, The Ascent found that the average American spent just 3 minutes a day on financial management. That adds up to 18 hours on money management each year, which sounds like a lot, until you realise that’s not even one full day out of all 365.
How can you use time (& time management) to help with your investment strategy?
Start Investing Yesterday.
If you’ve read any of our recent articles, you know we’re all about building a healthier money mindset, and starting to invest yesterday helps with just that.
The hardest part of starting something new is actually starting it, and investing is no different. Sending your hard-earned cash into the world can - rightfully - be a daunting experience. So why not skip the nervous waiting around and start it yesterday?
When you’re in the final stages of preparing your portfolio, your strategy, and your fund, take a teeny amount of money and just . . . invest it somewhere. Treat it like you’re up on a diving board, counting to three, and then jump on two.
By the time you get around to the ‘real’ first investment, you’ll already have conquered the fear of the unknown and all the stress that comes with a new experience. If you’ve already invested £2, you can use the experience to invest £20, £200, and one day, much more.
Think (super)long-term.
For most of us, investing will be a long-term activity, which can make it easier to put off for the next week over and over again.
Ask yourself:
- Do I have long-term plans to work towards?
- Why do I put off investing when it can help me achieve my dreams?
One possible answer you might come up with is that the future is, well, very far away. If you’re investing for your retirement, and you’re in your 20s or 30s, you’ve got a while to go before you withdraw that money.
So how do you combat that to start investing? One way is to seriously think about what the long-term means to you. If you’ve investing towards retirement, do you know where you want to be at that point in your life? Living in a mortgage-free house? Happily surrounded by grandchildren you love to spoil? Or maybe you want to travel the world on cruise ships year after year after year!
If you can come up with a long-term dream that really excites you, it’s much easier to break out of the ‘investment procrastination’ cycle.
To help you get started, we’ve even got our Financial Planning checklist available for you to download today.
Don’t spend your time . . . invest it!
The final time tip for investing your money can be applied at any stage of your life, whether you’ve got no idea what risk tolerance is (our Money School Glossary could help with that), or your friends now call you for investing advice.
Investing sees your money go towards achieving the proposals, projects, and dreams of people around the world, and you have the power to fund some pretty amazing ideas.
That’s why it’s important to keep investing your time to the process even after you’ve started. Think about the impact that you want your money to have - how can you achieve this? Are these specific companies or values you want to invest in? Or maybe even ones you definitely want to avoid?
If this sounds like something that you’re interested in, we’re in the process of creating a video-on-demand course all about sustainable investing. You can read all about it by clicking the button below, and in the meantime, why not download our ‘Introduction to Sustainable Investing’