Growing up, I figured investing was something super rich people did because they had money to burn. It intimidated me, but I figured I’d never have to worry about it. Turns out, investing is for the rest of us, too, and it’s actually important if you want to grow your net worth—even if you’re not a billionaire.


Why I Was Afraid to Invest

At some point in your life, you’ve probably done something that seemed insurmountable, then accomplished it and realized it was much easier than you thought. Taking your first college midterm. Riding the subway in New York. Investing is another overwhelming task that’s not as hard as it seems.


It does get complicated, though. It’s one thing to read a guide on how to get started with investing—we need those guides. In practice, though, investing usually happens gradually. At least in my experience, you don’t jump in all at once. It’s more like a cautious dip into the pool, and you learn a lot about it as you go.

Like a lot of people, I assumed investing was too risky. I thought it was like playing the lottery. These are common misconceptions when you don’t know much about investing. Really, though, this was an excuse.

I was mostly afraid of it because there was so much jargon involved and it seemed like something reserved for an entirely different group of people—a lot like riding the subway in New York. There are so many streets, so many stops and transfers. It’s really something for fancy city folks. Except that it’s not. When you ride it for the first time, it can be intimidating, sure, but all you need to navigate the subway system is a map, some common sense, and your two feet. It might take a few rides, but you’ll figure it out.


I Wanted “Free” Money

I got lucky. At my first “real” job, my older, more experienced coworkers convinced me to hop on our company 401(k).


“It’s free money,” they told me. “You have to take it.”

Like many employer-sponsored 401(k) plans, ours had a match. It was probably something like 50% of my contributions up to 6% of my salary—a common scenario. So basically, up to a point, my employer would match half of every dollar I saved in my retirement account. It did seem like a good deal, and I didn’t want to miss out on it, so I agreed to sign up.


At that point, I had even read a couple of personal finance books that discussed investing, but nothing got me started like the idea of leaving free money on the table.


“Should I invest in my company’s 401(k)?” People have a hunch it’s a good deal, even if they’re not sure why.

In fact, one of the financial questions people ask me about most often is, “Should I invest in my company’s 401(k)?” People have a hunch it’s a good deal, even if they’re not sure why.


401(k)s get a lot of crap, but they’re actually pretty awesome. They encourage people to start investing when they would’ve just sat on their money, or worse, blown it on frivolous crap.

Surprisingly, I Didn’t Miss The Money I Saved

Sometimes you don’t make enough for the luxury of frivolous crap, though. My paycheck was already small, and I worried I didn’t have enough every month to contribute to this fancy 401(k). Even though my coworkers compared it to “free money,” I was still reluctant to get started. I wanted all of my money!


“You’ll never even miss it,” a coworker told me. “Just set aside 10%, and you’ll never even know it’s gone.”

Oddly enough, I didn’t. It was probably an extra $150 a month, which was a lot to me, but maybe because it was already gone when I got my paycheck, I didn’t notice a difference. (It’s also helpful that 401(k) contributions are pre-tax). And this helped assuage my fear that investing was too risky.


Like the best investors out there, I literally forgot about my portfolio, so I wasn’t too worried about the risk. I signed up for the plan, probably picked a simple target date fund, and boom—I was officially an investor. I had no idea what that meant or what I was doing, but hey, I got started.




Then My Investments Started to Pay Off

Over time, I switched jobs, earned more, paid off debt, and kept investing in 401(k)s without giving it too much thought.


One day, I got a statement from our company’s new investment firm. I had something like $7,000 in my 401(k). I was floored. I had no idea I’d accumulated that much money over the past few years—money I didn’t even think about.

Granted, there was something bittersweet about it. I mean, I couldn’t blow this cash on sushi and fancy camera equipment or anything. Still, it was mine. For the first time ever, I had an actual net worth. Sure, Elon Musk probably blows his nose with $7,000 on any given day, but it was a big deal to me.


Most importantly, it was my first real taste that investing really could pay off. I started looking at the data. I started learning what a “return” and “capital gain” meant and figuring out all the complicated investing terms. Sure, I’d read about portfolios and dividends and stuff; I knew their definitions. Some words don’t really mean anything until you experience them, though, and that goes for most investing jargon.




I Learned to Optimize My Savings

That nest egg was awesome, but I had some money goals at the time. I wanted to save for travel, and I wanted to save for a move. So I kept saving just enough to get my “free” 401(k) money while I also met my financial goals.


Soon after, though, it was time to optimize. I was earning a solid income—probably around $50k a year—I met my financial goals, and that motivated me to take the next step with my finances, which meant getting on track with my retirement. The specifics of that mean different things for different people, but for me it meant:

This is where those guides come in handy. (In fact, many of the Two Cents guides were selfishly written because I wanted to learn about the topic myself and then share what I learned). When you’re ready to dig into your investing, the jargon and rules aren’t that overwhelming. They make more sense when you can experience them first-hand.


It helped me to seek out the answers when I was ready for them, rather than the other way around. That’s just me, though—a start to finish investing guide might very well help someone go from zero to sixty. I don’t think it works out that neatly for most investors, though.




If investing seems like an overwhelming obstacle, take solace in the fact that most people don’t just sit down and knock it out. Like most obstacles, it starts with a single step. That might be signing up for a 401(k) or opening an IRA or picking some index funds. Whatever it is, you don’t have to figure it out all at once.

Illustration by Sam Woolley.