Saving vs. Investing: What Is Investing? Part 2 – How to Find Your Best Investments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of6dysqMJ04 In a sea of investment choices, it can be overwhelming to determine which are the best investments for you. But don’t let overwhelm keep you in the dark, procrastinating, making mediocre decisions, losing money, and perpetually frustrated. The first step to confident investing is having a clear picture of exactly what you want and WHY.  Knowing what you want allows you to set goals that will advance you towards your destination and measure your progress.  Secondly, prepare.  Next, you need to be armed with the tools to identify opportunities that match.  Finally, you implement, measure progress, and repeat. * Define success* Prepare* Identify opportunities that match* Implement* Measure progress* Rinse and repeat Where Investing Fits into the Cash Flow System We love cash flow.  Cash flow today is the stepping stone for cash flow tomorrow. In the Cash Flow System, you first increase cash flow by keeping more of the money you make.  Then you protect your money.  Finally, you increase and make more. Investing is part of stage 3.  Building a cash-flowing asset portfolio of real estate and business accelerates time and money freedom. In the last article, Saving vs. Investing: What is Investing? Part 1 – Cash Flow, we’ve illustrated the power of cash flow investing in creating financial freedom. Before that, we discussed the preparation of habitual saving that allows you to build usable capital. Today, we’ll help you select your opportunities by answering: * How do I determine the best investments for me?* How do I minimize risk in my investments? We’ll help you determine the best investments for you by showing you that the answer lies in the most unexpected place. And then we’ll give you the #1 secret to lowering your investment risk. How Do I Determine the Best Investments for Me? Now that you have a vision for what you want your investments to do, let’s go shopping.  How do you figure out what the best investments are? Asset Categories Instead of narrowing down your choices, we first need to expand the options.  Unfortunately, what you’re typically offered is like seeing the appetizer menu only, when there’s a full range of salad, soup, entrée, dessert, and cocktail menus to choose from. While you may have been led to believe that your options are all housed in the stock market, the world of investing is much broader. There are four main asset categories to choose from: * Paper Assets* Commodities* Real Estate* Business Paper Assets Paper assets include stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, and the forex market. Within this category are equities (stocks), fixed income assets (bonds), and cash equivalents that include money market accounts. Often, paper assets are wrapped into a basket of mutual funds with various risk levels.