I started investing. But it’s not what you think.

Let me introduce you a type of investment for future.

We all know that a lot of people around the world are enthusiastic in investing and allocate some of their earnings for future. I am one of them, But relatively new in that group. They are behind every possible assets like stocks, mutual fund, commodities, gold, real estate and new the guy, crypto currency.

We can invest in these assets by one time or recurrently. Then the amount will compound. We will get great return after some years (conditions apply. if no big disasters occurred, similar one is happening now). What about a type of investing, which will save some money by reducing the expenses in future.

Let’s compare this type of investment with stock market investment.

By creating respective accounts, You can start investing in famous company’s stocks and just relax. As someone said, “Don’t work for money. Make it work for you”. That’s it. You may have a chance to be a millionaire (again, conditions apply).

Along with stocks, invest some of your time, care (sometimes money) in good habits. Here, the result is different. You will not get millions in future. But you can save money in future by reducing expenses. For example, start invest your some of your time in daily exercises. It will save you from expenses of 40’s or 50’s.

Consider, You didn’t invest in daily exercises in 20’s, Let me bring you a hypothetical time machine, and we travelled to your 40’s. You are at hospital for some checkups. You look very older than 40’s. You look very tired. You may have suffering from some heart diseases, diabetes, obesity or even worse, the cancer. The hospital bills are huge than now. You are spending lion share of your earnings and savings for regular checkups, medicines, surgeries etc. You are blaming your 20’s or 30’s self for not investing in exercise. You can only blame but not go back to past.

In stock market, not all stocks/companies will give you profit. Some of them will give loss too. Similarly, In life, some habits will give you losses or expenses in future. Bad habits like smoking, frequent drinks, junk foods are famous examples. You should identify which habits are good and which are bad for your future self. In stock market world, some people will do a fundamental and technical analysis with charts, graph of previous data. Similarly, analyze and explore for selecting good habits and avoiding the bad habits. I am not taking this moment to suggest the good habits. You can get from plenty of resources. From medium itself.

The habits are not shrinks just to health. Let’s consider you didn’t invest in self development habits like learning new skills, doing challenging things. Instead you had been in comfort zone by binge watching netflix, scrolling through social media in your free time. We travelled to your 30’s in our hypothetical time machine. Some new virus variants are releasing faster than android updates. But you are still outdated. The hot demanding skills are changed. But not your skills. Some countries are invading other. Rest of the countries are giving weapon and verbal support instead of solving the issues by diplomatic discussions. Inflation is accelerating. But not your earning. Then you will start to blame your 20’s.

The point is, we should always consider or visualize our future self and select good habits and say good bye to bad. And start ‘Invest’ in habits for health, work life and future. So that, you won’t accuse your younger self in future.