Smart Investing Leads to Good Returns – But How Much to Invest?

How much money should you invest? Like many other people in the world, you may be interested in trying your chances with investing in different commodities to turn a profit and make some money. There are many different arenas that you can do that in and as long as you use a good sense of judgment, particularly with choosing which information and advice to access, your investments could do you a lot of good.

Getting started in investing is probably one of the hardest aspects of investing. Many people think that they have to invest their entire savings to have luck in investing. That isn’t necessarily true, indeed, if you can afford it, it’s a good maxim to only invest what you can afford to lose.

But I’m guessing that you’re reading this article because you can’t afford that kind of luxury. So just how much of your life savings should you be prepared to invest?

A good financial plan will help you determine the major factors for beginning your investing. It will help you figure out what your investment goals are and then with the money that you have, be able to tell you whether or not you can reach those goals at this time.

Sometimes, there will be short term and long term goals to investing and you should never feel like that there is only one way of investing. You need to do what is going to be good and beneficial to your portfolio. One big rule though: don’t let anyone ever counsel you into borrowing money for investing. It’s an absolute no-no – a slippery slope that leads to a very dark spot and will bring you personal and financial stress. If you haven’t got the money yourself to invest, then don’t invest until you have. Stop smoking, stop drinking, whatever – but don’t on any account borrow money to invest, not if you value your happiness and sanity.

When looking at investing in something specific, a key piece of advice is RESEARCH! Many people will trust a friend or family member implicitly and blindly invest large amounts of money without even looking into the statistics of the investment. Many a family or relationship has been broken because the loss of money has been the focal point of an argument. Take the time to research what you are going to have to invest, what the returns are and if it is something that is going to be long lasting or short term. A key to this, as outlined by Mark Shipman in the Autonomous Millionaire, is EQ vs IQ. To summarise, you must be in control of your emotions in order to invest properly – investing should be cold, unemotional and based on nothing but mathematics – even top investors have made enormous mistakes when they’ve allowed their egos and emotions to enter the equation.

Investing doesn’t have to be a stressful thing. It can be exciting and very rewarding if you go about it the right way and make sure that you are doing everything you can to protect what is yours. Particularly, find the right mentor(s) and half the job is done.

Andy Markus is an online trader who is busy studying the methods of acclaimed trading guru Mark Shipman using his http://www.TheAutonomousMillionaire.com course.