Chapter 12
Investment Tools

Investing is essentially making your money work for you, aiming to grow it over time to meet your financial goals. This chapter will guide you through the various investment options available on your financial journey.

• You should have identified what truly matters to you — your core reasons for working and saving ((Whys)), and
• Transformed these Whys into actionable goals. Set deadlines and outline the steps to achieve them, and
• Created a spending plan that divides your bring home income into Needs, Wants, and Savings. This plan should reflect your priorities, covering both necessities and goals, and
• You should understand the importance of prioritizing saving a reserve of cash (emergency fund) set aside for unforeseen expenses (both good and bad), and also know most effective places to keep this fund for easy access.

Once you’ve established a solid spending plan and are ready to save, it’s time to focus on investing those savings wisely. Before diving into investments like Tesla, Nvidia, Gold, savings bonds, oil futures, real estate, or cryptocurrency, you have to understand which assets fit your portfolio and in what proportion. This leads us to the concept of Asset Allocation discussed in chapter “Asset Allocation”.