Simplified Investing: Brokerages, Accounts, Investments

I wanted to give you a sneak peak of what I have been working on for my next video.

My focus is on helping simplify how to think about all of the investment jargon out there. It can be challenging knowing where to start. So my next video (or videos..) will be investing for beginners. And here is the analogy I landed on: gardening!

Your brokerage is like one of those raised planter boxes that you (or someone you may know) gardens out of.

Inside the planter box, are "buckets" that hold different plants.

These buckets are your investment accounts. Think of a 401K, Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, or Taxable investing account. They sit inside your brokerage, and hold your investments.

Which buckets should you have in your planter box? A good mix! For our financial garden, we want a mix of accounts that help save us from taxes now and into the future.

Of course, inside these buckets sit our investments, or our growing plants. Just like a garden that grows with sun and water, our investments grow with time and the money we contribute.. watering our financial garden.

I've boiled these 3 steps down into a checklist: picking your planter box, picking your buckets, and picking your plants. Since you are already subscribed, you can get this one-page checklist on the website: https://www.moneymonk.co/free-tools/

Here's the neat thing: taking action on these three steps could be done in about 20 minutes. Yes, there is much more to learn about investing, but the steps you need to take are quite simple: open a brokerage, open your accounts, place a trade. My hope is that this checklist can help you on taking those steps!

The videos I will be recording will go into more detail on each of these steps, with a special focus on investing and placing a trade. If you want a head start on that, a great place to start assessing your own risk tolerance is by answering Vanguard's risk assessment quiz: https://investor.vanguard.com/tools-calculators/investor-questionnaire#modal-start-quiz

The checklist then has some common "ticker symbols" that cover different types of investment assets, from U.S. stocks to international stocks, and bonds. I will get into choosing assets in a future newsletter/video.

Wishing you a healthy weekend and progress towards your money plan!

Greg