Briana’s Basics of Investing

So, why investing?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about investing, it is this: investing is one of the only ways of building wealth. I hear this time, and time again, and yet, even though most of us would like to grow our wealth, investing is terrifying. The fear isn’t totally unfounded. Investing sometimes seems like a secret society, and only those who know what the stock index was at 2:47pm on October 29^th, 1973 get to enter. It feels counterintuitive that something that something that can radically change our money and our lives so confusing to dive into. Of course, I believe it’s at least partially by design. The financial sector has so many gatekeepers; it’s hard to know which key to use and where. Then, it turns out keys are obsolete, and you were supposed to be using the fingerprint scanner all along.

This project is a basic guide to investing. I know it seems like I should start the basics with budgeting or emergency funds or paying down debt, but I decided to start with investing because frankly, it’s where I am right now. I decided near the end of last year that I wanted to open an IRA (Individual Retirement Account). I told myself I’d start my research in January and open one by the end of February. Now, it’s March and I’ve barely scraped the surface. I think collecting my research and creating this guide will help me feel more assured as I decided how I should invest. If I have some semblance of external pressure, I think it will help keep me on track. I know a little about investing already, but to feel secure, I need to know the details of what I’m getting involved with. Here are the big ideas I currently know about investing.

Briana’s Remedial Investing Knowledge:

Stocks and Bonds
If your employer has a 401k match, you need to invest AT LEAST enough to reach the match.
Start early because compounding interest is your friend
Warren Buffett is really good at it. So, is Bill Gates. Vanderbilt’s investments help fund their financial aid
Traditional IRAs) are taxed when you take out money, but Roths* are taxed when you’re putting money in.
1. Someone told me I should definitely get a Roth because taxes will never be lower than they are now.
Go for index funds
Robo-Advisors are a thing
Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwaab? are the trifecta
Buy low, sell high; don’t be scared when the market drops. Stay the course

Because I overshare, I want to start with an overall state of my investments. I have a retirement account through my employer (a 403b with no match because government employee!), and two play accounts through Stash and Ellevest. I refer to them as play accounts because I opened them a while ago to start learning about investing (Stash) and support their mission (Ellevest), and they barely have any money in them. I just wanted to start investing ASAP to make it a habit; they also give me a peek into how quickly things can rise and fall.

Briana’s Investments

Company	Date opened	Type of Investments	Amount Invested*
Stash	August 2017	Various index funds created by program	$154.23
Retirement Services of AL	July 2018? Honestly not sure but I guess when I got hired	Don’t know eep!	$3607.24
Ellevest	May 2019	Not sure; made goals for Emergency Fund and Building wealth	$139.83

*Amount invested here means total amount in my account when I’m writing this. I actually didn’t separate out what I put in and interest/dividends/returns because it seems unnecessarily complicated right now.

I don’t think I’m starting fresh. I’m pretty well versed in the umbrella ideas of stocks, index funds, mutual funds, and the American market, but I’d like to know more of the who’s and the why’s so I can really understand how my money will be working for me. Although there’s a ton of ways you can invest, I’ll be focusing on retirement investing. I will absolutely revisit this when I’m attempting to open a brokerage account, but I’ll at least ATTEMPT to focus on one goal at a time (if you saw my New Year’s Resolutions, you’d know how difficult that is for me).

While I create this guide, I know I plan to intake as much information as I can. I’m starting with Erin Lowry’s Broke Millennial Guide to Investing, and I’ll likely be trying to comb through J.L. Collins stock series as I go. I’ll also lean into some of the financial communities I’m involved in like the Afford Anything community as well as Women in Pursuit of FI, both of which have already been wealths of information. I hope watching me go through the process encourages you or at least allows you see someone else flounder so you feel a little better about your own circumstances. If you have any questions (or suggestions!), I’d love to hear them. Help a Briana out!