Intro to Next Series- Dollars and Sense

Yesterday I was walking with a coworker and he made the comment, “I wish I would have gotten in the stock market about a month and a half ago.” If you are unaware the market has made a significant increase. I don’t think it’s fully recovered, but it brings up a good point. When is the right time to invest?

The answer is actually very simple. The right time to invest is now. Looking historically at the market if you engage in dollar cost averaging (putting in the same dollar amount each month) you will make on average a 10% return. The truth is that no one knows what the market is going to do. A lot of the time what ends up happening is we have paralysis analysis as we wait for the right time to drop our money in. I recognized this in myself. I was dragging my feet rather then investing. I finally just bit the bullet and dropped about ¾ of my net worth in the market. Regardless of if I am up or down in the short term over the long term I can expect my money to grow.

Don’t wait for the right time because you are in the right time now. Regardless of what happens next week or the week after you will be ok. In my next few posts I plan to answer some questions such as: Is the stock market risky? What should I invest in? We’ll also look at Warren Buffet and determine why he has made the money that he has. Stay Tuned.