The 4 Decisions You Need To Make Before Investing.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

1. Financial goal

You need to determine your end goal with investing

• Is it to buy a house?
• • Is it to send your kids to college?
• • Is it to retire early and become financially free?

You need to calculate a specific number of desired funds in your portfolio.

2. Time horizon

When do you want this money?

If it’s a few years from now, you should not invest it

The short-term market movements are very unpredictable You do not want to have a sudden 30–40% downturn right before you need the money

If it’s 5–10 years from now, you should invest in relatively safe investments Have a higher allocation into income-producing assets

• Real estate or REITs
• Dividend stocks
• Bonds

Are you a young investor with a time horizon several decades from now?

Then you invest in companies with higher growth prospects They may not pay you now via dividends or interest But they may be dividend payers 20–30 years from now

3. Involvement

How much time are you willing to devote every week to your investments?

If you don’t have the time or interest you should stick with

• Index funds
• Bond funds
• REITs
• ETFs

4. Risk tolerance

Everyone is a long-term investor in a bull market when stocks go up And then 99% of them panic sell their stocks on the first 20–30% drop If you cannot stomach volatility and short-term drawdowns you should stay out of the market…

High-growth stocks may give huge returns but they come at a cost Even holding stocks like Apple and Amazon for years means you will have to endure several drawdowns of 20–30–40% along the way Volatility is the price you pay for holding high-growth and high-quality stocks

To summarize

1. Financial goal
2. 2. Time horizon
3. 3. Involvement
4. 4. Risk tolerance

You need to decide what these 4 factors are before you go into investing Otherwise, there may be many unfortunate surprises along the way…