INVEST Now! Even if You Have Debt

Don’t get caught up in the mindset of, “I have debt, so I can’t invest”. I did this for 10 years, I wasted some of the best investing years, my twenties. I always thought that if I took the money that I would invest, then I could throw it at my debt and be debt free faster. After we no longer had this debt then we would invest. The problem is, that it never happened the way I thought it would in my mind. Something always came up, like the car broke down or an unexpected invitation to go out, or even the spontaneity of going out on a whim. So because of my mistakes, I just never invested. The company I worked for at the time did a 401k with a 4% match, and I did not do it! This is one of my biggest regrets to this day. I worked at that company for 6 years, and instead of investing a few hundred dollars a month and getting free money back in return, I got nothing! Simply because I felt that we needed those extra hundred dollars. Being completely honest, I’m sure we could have gone without that money. We would have found a way to make it work. Even without investing, we still never had enough money. We were simply stuck in a vicious cycle of debt. I would like for you to learn from my mistakes. It’s true that if you have debt, you should most definitely make it your priority to pay it off. That is the biggest reward and investment in yourself. I believe that investing in a 401k or a Roth IRA is like a muscle to mind connection. It's a habit we need to build, it’s not something that comes naturally to most of us. But once we exercise this investing muscle and implement it into our lives routinely, it will be as easy as breathing! So, even if you start with just $20 a month, a quantity you will not miss. I encourage you to start now! $20 is what my husband and I each started with. We each opened up a Roth IRA through Fidelity. Since it was only $40 a month, we honestly did not miss it. It was a set it and forget it type of account. But once I logged into our Fidelity accounts a few months later and saw that we each had $300 in our accounts, I have to say it felt GREAT! Why? Well, because I had always told myself this story that we couldn’t invest. That every dollar we made had to be used to pay bills, debt, or be spent on our kids. But we began to send money to our Roth IRA’s during one of our worst financial periods, and to be honest we made it work without those $40. And once you see the accumulation and start educating yourself more on money, you get excited and want to invest more. So after being years in debt and having nothing to show for it, seeing that we had $600 in total made me very happy! The only way to invest more is by paying off your debt and by controlling your expenses.  Also, just in case you have never heard this before, because I sure had not. The money that is sent to a Roth IRA, still needs to be invested into different funds in order to see it grow, because if not it is just a glorified savings account. (If you have not heard of her, I recommend you check out financial expert, Rose Han on youtube. She was the very first one that I myself ever came across who openly talked about this, after that I heard others mention it but I felt smart because I had already learned that from her lol) Overall, I truly hope that you are inspired to start investing, because investing and saving is paying yourself first before you start to pay everyone else.