3 Helpful Investment Tips I’ve Learned in the Last Two Years

Are you on a journey to learn more investment tips? I’m on a path to financial freedom, and investing is a big part of the process.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial or investing expert. These are just my experiences, opinions, and learnings. I added the disclaimer because people have opinions and advice that might be different than mine based on experience and education. I just wanted to share 3 things that would have been helpful for me to know at the beginning of my investment journey.

Let’s go back in time to December 2020. That’s when I put my first $10 into the stocks. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I picked some random stocks and went for them.

A couple of months later, they were doing really well. I added more when I could, just $10 here and $10 there. By the time summer 2021 rolled around, the stocks were looking great!

Here is where I made my BIG mistake (well, maybe it won’t be a mistake in 10 or 20 years). I had some retirement savings sitting there, earning 0%. PLEASE check your IRA accounts and make sure you actually INVEST the money. So I filed the paperwork to move it and invested it all during the months of September/October 2021.

At that point, I was subscribing to Motley Fool and following the top stock pick advice. So, hopefully, in the long run, it will serve me well. But the problem was that I invested everything I had when the market was super high. After that, it started dropping and continued into 2022, dropping lower and lower and lower.

Since then, I’ve learned a few things helping me build my IRA and personal investment accounts.

Here are my top 3 investment tips

1. What CEO’s buy — You can check when CEOs buy stocks of their own companies. Some say this may indicate that the CEO thinks things will go well and the prices will rise. When they buy stocks, they are required to file a form. One website that tracks the purchases is here.
2. Dollar Cost Averaging — A year ago, I had never heard of this term before. Basically, this means you consistently put a little bit into the stocks for a long time. So over time, the average price you pay for the stock will balance out. This has helped me a lot since I bought a lot of stocks at top dollar. It also helps because I only invest small amounts in different stocks. I now have a diversified portfolio with daily ups and downs in different sectors. However, I think it has strong potential for the long term.
3. Dividend-paying stocks — One thing to consider when choosing which stocks to buy is the dividend yield. Not every stock pays a dividend, but some do and have consistent returns year after year. If you have a lot of money to invest, this is an easy way to make passive income. If you put all your investment money into dividend-paying stocks, you will get that money to re-invest. These are the stocks I am focusing on in 2023.

I hope these investment tips help you get started on your investing journey! I plan to share more as I educate myself and learn more on my own financial journey.

Being financially literate is very important and schools don’t do good enough job of preparing people to manage the various financial aspects of life. These are tips I wish I would have known years ago, but I’m glad to finally start now!