b&b 215: Back to Basics: How to Start Investing For Real

The Race and Wealth Podcast Network

In this week’s episode Brunch and Budget takes it back to the basics of investing. Dyalekt and Pamela speak with Caleb Silver, Editor in Chief and Senior Vice President of content at Investopedia, about the basics of investing and how to get started. Episode HighlightsCaleb: More than half of the country is not invested in the stock market or in the equity markets. The best day to start investing was yesterday, the second-best day is today. Caleb: Investing is a path to wealth that most people don’t participate in. It is one of the most stable paths to wealth. It is getting started and having a plan. Caleb: There is the noise around investing which you need to ignore. There is having a plan and a path to investing and having the discipline so that you are constantly adding to your investments and building your wealth over time in a way that avoids as much risk as possible. Caleb: People who have a disciplined approach to investing and know their risk tolerance and are not betting everything on one or two stocks, those are the people that are compounding their wealth 5-10% every year. If you do that over time and you start young you are going to love yourself as you get a little bit older.Caleb: Typically, the rules have been, the younger you are the more stocks you should have in your portfolio; those have the fastest potential for growth over time. They are also the riskiest. If you are 20, the typical rule is you should have 100% in stocks. If you are 40 you go to 80% stock - 20% bond portfolio. As you get close to 50 you maybe want to balance that out a little more. The older you get the less risky you want to be, in general. The younger you are the more risk you are willing to take because you have the most important thing on your side, and that’s time.Pamela: I will say if there is anything that you don’t understand, we have used Investopedia for many of our investment appetizers. I still use it today as a financial planner when I run across jargon I don’t understand. There are videos, easy definitions. There’s great real-world examples and things like that. If you don’t know where to go for investing, this is a great place to start.Caleb: Come any time, it’s free. We are here to share the knowledge. If you see anything that you think is missing from the site or want to add something to it, you can always hit me up. I am easy to find on About Us section of Investopedia.Caleb: Check our reviews. Check out our courses online. Check out the regular content that we do. We have some newsletters too. I write one every day in the afternoon, Market Sum. It comes to your inbox at 5:30. Or in the morning we have News to You to set you up for the day. There’s plenty of content and you are welcome to it, have at it.Dyalekt: My favorite thing that you said this whole time was talking about making sure your money can make some money while you sleep. What are 3-5 steps or things that I should know so that I can sleep easy when I start investing.Caleb: Knowing what your risk tolerance is. Building a diversified portfolio. Adding to it over time by dollar cost averaging, a little bit every month. Rebalancing every year so that you’re not too heavily weighted one way or the other. And don’t look at it and pay attention to the news all the time because that is only going to make you nuts. Enjoy the magic carpet ride of compound annual growth, there’s nothing quite like it.