Investing on a Budget

Have you ever found yourself wanting to make investments for the future, but ended up telling yourself that you simply couldn't afford to make those investments? If you think that just because you're on a limited income you can't afford to make investments in your future, you might want to consider working money for investments into a household budget. Though you might think at first that there's no room for the additional expenses of investing in your budget, you'll find that through a bit of creative saving and a little bit of prioritizing that you can make a few choice investments on regular intervals. Building your budget One of the ways that you can find the money to make investments on a limited income is to create a budget and allow for some minor investments either with each salary payment or at the end of each month. This money can either be placed into a savings account for the specific purpose of saving money until there is enough to invest, or can be invested directly into partial shares of stocks and bonds via certain investment brokers especially some of those that do business online. The amount of money budgeted for investment doesn't have to be a large part of your monthly income, nor does it have to come at the expense of some of your other bills and commitments; simply use a portion of the money that you would have left over as spending money, and only a portion of that. Getting creative with savings If you feel strange budgeting investment money into your monthly expenses, there are other methods that you can use to build your investment fund. One possible way to save the money that you need to invest is to have a container in which you place your loose change at the end of the evening, just like a child's bank. At the end of each month, take the change from the container and use it as money for your investments. While this might not seem like a lot of money, you'll find that over the course of a month you build up a decent amount of change. Should you want to have a slightly larger yield over the course of the month, you could repeat this same process but use smaller-denomination bills instead of loose change. Even if you only put aside 1 bill each day, that's still 30 or 31 by the end of most months. Making small investments over time A misconception that many people have about investment is that large investments must be made all at once. Many investment service providers, especially those who operate online, allow for relatively small investments to be made... even if the investment only buys a few hundredths of a share. Over time these small investments build up into a larger total investment, and with any luck the value of the investment will continue to grow even as you purchase more partial shares. Reinvesting Once you've begun to purchase some stocks and bonds, you might find that some of them are paying dividends... in other words, you're getting back a little bit of money as the stocks or bonds continue to grow. While these dividends might not be worth much early on because of the low number of shares that you own, you can set your investment account up so that it automatically reinvests the dividends into the stock that created them. Though it's not a large purchase, it's still that much more that you have invested... and over time the small purchases add up. You may freely reprint this article provided the following author's biography (including the live URL link) remains intact: