Yes, you, a women, can invest safely in the stock market. My daughter shivers at the thought but knows she must and so can you.
Too often ladies think the stock market is a man’s world or that it is too risky. The “too risky” attitude is actually what keeps most women out of the market. The only reason two of my three daughters have investments is because their workplace offers retirement accounts.
If you are like any of my daughters you look at investing in a similar way: your money is too precious to lose, buying new shoes is very important and for the kids always need new clothes. None of these viewpoints should keep you out of the investment world and in fact should be reasons to be an investor. Let’s look at these in a bit more detail:
Money is too precious – absolutely true, but investing doesn’t mean you have to take unnecessary risks. Speeding through a yellow light is taking an unnecessary risk. Investing can be safe if you follow key, conservative buying and selling rules like I have mentioned in other articles and use software that allows you to the option of setting it up to reflect your own personal nature. Putting money in an ordinary savings account today sets you up to lose. If inflation is running at 2.7%, today’s rate, and a typical savings account is paying 0.01% then you are automatically losing big time because your money sitting in that savings account will have less buying power tomorrow and especially in a year than if it were invested conservatively in a dividend paying stock, ETF, or mutual fund.
New Shoes and New Clothes – this answer to being able to afford to spend more may not make sense at first, but think about it a moment. If you have an investment plan like I have discussed in previous articles that generates money instead of losing it in a savings account, you can take those profits and buy more clothes and shoes.
If you are like my daughter who loves new clothes and can hardly avoid any sale at Macy’s or the Gap and shivers with the thought of putting her hard earned cash in the investment markets, then like she and I have discussed, you need to look at investing from your perspective and not from a typical man’s perspective.
Her perspective is that she wants the money to be there tomorrow. That is her first and foremost thought. Does she want it to grow and build? You bet, but she wants the original amount to be as rock solid as possible. The keys to investing from this perspective are simple:
• Use a reliable, proven, easy software program to make buy/sell recommendations
• Avoid stock tips
• Consider ETFs and mutual funds because they offer diversification and more safety than just putting all your dollar eggs in one stock basket
• Write down you concerns and objectives so you can tailor your investing to your personality and goals.