Don’t Put Off Investing

If you’ve been meaning to start investing in the stock market, don’t put it off. Each year you postpone it is a whole year in which your money can’t grow for you — and even if you amass a hefty sum after 20 or 30 years, that one extra year could mean tens of thousands of additional dollars left on the table. (You do want to hold off on buying stocks if you don’t yet have an emergency fund, are still paying off high-interest debt or haven’t started learning about investing.) Don’t assume that you shouldn’t start until you have thousands of dollars to invest; you can start with as little as a few hundred. If the market has been surging (though it certainly hasn’t lately), don’t assume that all the good buys are gone. There are almost always some appealingly priced stocks — and often, there are many. You don’t need to be a supersmart or savvy investor, either, studying companies in depth and choosing the best ones. You can — and, arguably, should — stick with simple low-fee broad-market index funds, such as one based on the S&P 500 Index. You can buy as few as one share at a time of the SPDR S&P 500 exchange-traded fund (ETF), for example. It trades with the ticker symbol SPY, and was recently around $263 per share. No matter how old you are, it’s probably not too late to improve your financial condition if you have money you can keep invested in stocks for five or, ideally, 10 or more years. The stock market has outperformed bonds, real estate and bank accounts over most long periods. You just need a small sum to start with, a suitable brokerage, patience and one or more good investment ideas (which might be just a low-fee index fund). Learn about good brokerages at Fool.com/theascent/buying-stocks. If you pay just $10 or less per trade, you can invest as little as $500 at a time and not end up spending too much of it on commissions.