What You’ll Learn

2015 has been the first “tough” year in over 5 years. The pain of the great recession is so… yesterday.

Therein lies the problem.

5% drops have become unbearable to most and many are afraid to invest… again.

I haven’t been 100% invested for a while, but I’m certainly not out of the market. My cash pile has been about 30-40% over the past 2 years and I’ve been adding to my core positions lately too. But even with a sizable cash amount, it’s been more than enough to beat the market and achieve returns I’ve been satisfied with.

Warren Buffett says that he maintains a $20B cash pile no matter what.

Whether you’re new to investing in stocks or not, or you know somebody who wants to start investing, there are a ton of excuses that hold people back.

Maybe this is you.

Or maybe you know someone like that.

But with the new year approaching fast, here are the top ten excuses people make and how to overcome them.

#10. I Don’t Know Anything About Investing

The classic scapegoat answer you hear all the time.

Actually, it was my answer for many years.

I knew nothing about any kind of investing, let alone picking stocks.

All I had was a 401k and the desire to make my own investment decisions.

I had already experienced my first 100% loss due to a bad financial advisor, so I decided I would learn how to do it myself.

The good thing about knowing nothing is that you don’t have any preconceived notions about how all this works. Before all this, I had never taken a finance, business, accounting or economics class so everything was brand new.

But knowing nothing helped because it helped to approach it with fresh eyes and an open mind, which is exactly what you’ve got.

Thankfully I found the path of value investing.

#9. I Don’t Have a Lot of Money to Play With

Starting small helps.

You are less afraid and it’s just easier to manage.

After all, if you are afraid of losing $200, how on earth will you handle paper losses of $20,000 if you have a million dollar or bigger portfolio in the future.

I started investing with just $3,000. That was big to me back then.