Here’s your free guide and spreadsheet
Why is investing so difficult? It seems to make sense, then why is it so hard to get started? There are three main reasons I can think of. Let me show you.
First, there’s so much conflicting information out there. So here’s how investing works in farmer terms. (Hey, I live in Wisconsin and this is what people talk about.)
You buy a weak little colt for $500. It eats a lot of grass and over time grows into this big, beautiful, strong horse that’s now worth $2,500. On Saturday you walk your horse down to the horse market in town, and you sell it for $2,500.
A $2,000 profit (and you didn’t even have to pay for the grass). Investing is really that simple, and you can start with any amount of money.
Second, you don’t want to lose money. Yes, you will lose money. Because on average the market goes down by 10% every 11 months, 20% every four years, and 30% every decade. Investing isn’t a straight line, instead it looks like this:
That’s the market over the last five years or so. Do you see all those dips? You’re losing money all the time. But if you can deal with the short-term volatility you’ll be rewarded over the long term because over the long term the market has returned about 7%.
The third reason investing is difficult: You have to do nothing. For everything we do in life when we work really hard it eventually pays off. Working hard at the gym? You get in shape. Working hard at your job? You get promoted. Working hard at your business? You grow revenue.
This is why being successful at investing is so counterintuitive. Because when you’re working really hard at it by tinkering and tweaking and adjusting your investments what you’re really doing is destroying your future wealth.
If you want to be better than the average investor it means doing something that most people can’t do, and that means putting up with years and decades of doing nothing.
Ready? Here’s the guide:
(Simply click the image to download your copy.)
And here’s the spreadsheet:
(Click the image to download.)
How do you use it? Once a month enter how much you’ve spent and the total amount of your investments and it makes this graph. When the lines cross you’ve reached financial freedom.
Just a heads up I’ll be in touch every week or so to let you know about new articles I publish. In the meantime, you can always contact me to ask questions, read more about me, and if you want to really stalk me, I’m on the Twitter and Facebook.
-Chris