You Did The Hard Stuff – Now Make It Automatic
Congratulations! You're done with all the hard stuff in the Assets & Chill investing projects. You've decided how much to invest, opened an investment account, and decided what to invest in. You've gotten a lot done!
The next few projects won't really require you to make any decisions. You just need to adjust a few settings in your investment account to keep your investments growing optimally. That way you'll wake up someday in the not-too-distant future and realize you've reached Assets & Chill.
Let Me Ask You A Hypothetical
Let's say you decided to invest $500 each month in the Choose What Percent of Your Income to Invest project. In which of the following two scenarios do you think you'll look back after a decade and see that you consistently invested $500 each and every month?
- Scenario A: You manually remember to log in each month, transfer the money to the investment account, and then buy the investments.
- Scenario B: You automate the whole process today so the money gets transferred and the investments get purchased without you ever having to think about it again.
Spoiler: Scenario B is the only universe in which you consistently invest $500 each month.
People make investing out to be way more complicated than it actually is. There are just two keys to investing: consistency and time. If you consistently invest and can wait patiently, you're going to be just fine.
We've used several calculators in these investing projects, but we haven't looked at a calculator that shows you how much your investment will be worth if you apply consistency and time. Here's one that does just that.
Investment Growth Calculator
Investment Growth Over Time
Assumes $0 initial investment, $500 monthly contribution, 7% annual real return, and 40 years of consistent investing.
As you can see after playing with the calculator, consistency and time can get you to Assets & Chill. Your assignment for this project is to log into your investment account and set up automatic monthly contributions based on what you chose in the Choose What Percent Of Your Income To Invest project so that you're consistently investing.
Up Next
In the next project we're going to automate another part of your account: when your investments send you dividends we're going to automatically invest those as well!