Different Investment Methods

As I said the other day in my post, I have many financial goals. Investing more heavily is one of my major goals. I invest a little here and there, but nothing major. I've been so focused on paying off my student loans that i've seem to forget everything else.

Investing and saving for retirement is important to me. Yes, I am only 23 and some might say “Live your life!,” but I know for a fact that I want to start saving now. Both W and I know that we don't want to work until we are 65, and if we do end up working, then it'll be something that we enjoy and something to fill up our time. We DON'T want to live paycheck to paycheck – why would we anyways?

There are many different ways that we can invest in our future. Below are some ways:

Real Estate

This sort of ties in with my post from this past week about whether or not I should pay off my house early. It seems like everyone these days is invested in real estate. Since we do know that we want to buy our next house next year, we are trying to decide whether we want to sell our current house or keep it and rent it out. Our monthly payment on our house is around $960, and we know that we could get anywhere from $1,200 to $1,500 per month.

There are expenses that would be associated with this of course if we decide to rent out the house. And of course there are other things that could come up such as the person never paying or destroying the house. We know of someone who had a rental house and the renters never paid. They also destroyed the house and a lot of things had to be replaced (such as flooring throughout the WHOLE house). Laws in our state (and in many others) are not on the side of the landowners, which is what mainly scares me. There are many mistakes that a real estate investor can make.

Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, Forex

We of course want to start investing more heavily in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and so on. Investopedia is a great website to learn about different ways to invest. I do have a Finance MBA and took tons of courses in investing and the risks associated with it. It can be a doozy! CMC forex trading is a possibility as well. Different instruments have varying risks, and since we are of course still in our early to mid 20s, then we will take a more aggressive method and invest in assets that have a higher return.