5 Mind Hacks to Make Yourself Learn to Invest
Thursday, March 11th, 2010I want to learn how to play the piano, I want to learn more about different modes of wealth accumulation, I want to learn how to skateboard.
We often want to learn a lot of things, but they are often never accomplished because we either forget about our desires or they fall under the weight of our daily to-do lists.
Investing and saving for retirement is one of these “I want to learn how to do that” topics.
The big difference between learning about investing and learning piano is that 10 lost years of investing can cost you over $100,000 in your lifetime, while 10 lost years of piano playing will probably cost you a little less. You could become a world famous pianist – yes – but even pianists have to keep track of their wealth and plan for the future.
One of my goals last year was to set up a taxable investing account for short-term savings. It took me almost 4 months of procrastination to come to a conclusion – I have too much uncertainity over the next 5 years of my life to be investing in a taxable account.
At least once a day for those 4 months I thought about learning more about taxable investing. I thought about researching funds, brokerages, and figuring out how much I could invest.
A lot of the time I would think about these things, they would make my head hurt, and I would do the easier thing – go to Facebook, check my Google Reader, or check out ESPN for a new Bill Simmons article. All of these things required a lot less thought.
In reality, I was hurting myself and my bottom line by wasting this time. I was potentially losing money every time I closed my Google Finance tab and went over to Twitter.
Since losing days, weeks, months, and years of investing time can cost you a lot of money in missed opportunity, it’s important to force yourself through your procrastination about investing decisions.
So how do we get past the, “ugh, I don’t want to do this today” stage of investing, and actually learn about it?
Here’s 5 tips that’ll help you break through your procrastination:











Hi, I'm Austin Morgan. I live in Japan, teach English, and write about personal finance. I hope you enjoy FF and feel free to 