Investment Ideas for Young Adults
Beyond Savings, What NEXT?
There is so much pleasure in watching your savings grow, once you start you will not be able to stop because it is almost addictive. Benjamin Franklin has this to say about money ‘Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more.’ What is next beyond savings is putting your money to work.-INVESTMENT.
Investment is simply putting your money to work. Creating future value. An investment is an asset or item acquired with the goal of generating income or appreciation. So as a young adult when I realized that my savings was growing, just lying in the bank, I had to think of using the money to generate more money.
Money is a tool and it is important to focus on how a tool will be used rather than getting the tool. Let how to use a tool; if not, it will be useless and obsolete. There will be no value!
There are different rates at which your money can work and different ways also. However, all kind of investment comes with its own risks. There is a kind of investment for every level of life you are in; for this article, I will be focusing on Investment students and young adults can start doing.
The first thing to do before deciding on the kind of investment to choose is to evaluate your risk strength; how well can you live without so much money and also what exactly do you want to achieve? There are several platforms that help young adults invest properly at minimum risk. We have the Mutual Fund; Agro-business investment, Treasury bill, Piggy Vest, etc.
Personally, I do invest with FarmCrowdy- “Farmcrowdy is Nigeria’s First Digital Agriculture Platform that empowers rural farmers”. So what they do is get sponsors (investors, YOU) to own a farmer and at the end of a particular month (Harvest Period), you get your initial payment and the profit. Now, they have different interest rates for different farms for a particular period of time. So reliable, you can read up more on them.
There is also Piggyvest, which helps save your money and gives you interest at the end of a particular period. Many others like that in Nigeria. Read up on them well and decide which suits you.
You can read a basic investment guide with Happy Economics and with Subomi Plumptre; very simple and easy for directions.
Ponzi schemes are not investment type, they are all scams. Examples are MMM, Loom, etc. even Network marketing is not an investment type. Don’t be fixated on immediate returns.
Before you engage at all in any investment, you must have your plans clearly laid out.
— How much do you want to invest?
— Why are you investing?
— What do you know about the investment option?
— Do we have sufficient information to go by?
— The time frame of the investment
— The returns you are expecting from the investment
— The RISKS involved
Also, other ways of investing are in the stock market 📈 and most recently the cryptocurrency. It is important you do your due diligence and in-depth research on market trends and strategies before putting in your hard-earned money.
The risk on these forms of investment is highly risky and can be heartbreaking; However, highly rewarding.
Platforms like Bamboo, Risevest, Binance and many other verified finance apps are so helpful in investing in the NY stock market, Nigerian Stock Exchange and Cryptocurrency. Just a scroll, a click on your phone will get you going.
Learn to diversify your portfolio (do not put all your eggs into one basket)… “Oluwa a wa pelu e”
We have the Mutual Fund which I would personally recommend for students and recent graduates. You can invest as low as N5, 000, N10, 000. Stanbic IBTC helps with that relatively perfect. Mutual funds work by pooling your money with that of other investors/individuals and investing it in a portfolio of other assets (e.g., treasury bills, equities, bonds). This means you’ll be able to invest in portfolios that you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to afford alone because you’re investing alongside others.
The Bottom Line
The most important decision that you can make as a young person is to get into the habit of saving regularly and forget about living large now.
I will recommend books like ‘The Richest Man in Babylon’, ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’, ‘The smart money woman’… They can help expand capacity on money management. Also, follow Subomi Plumptre on Twitter, follow me @ifm4real too ooo 😄….
If you are inspired and have learned something, just clap 👏🏽 for me. Peace ✌🏽
