Improving Your Quality of Life through Investing

When we talk about saving/investing, we tend to think of it as something that will benefit us at some point down the road.

One of my favorite things about the investing principles I generally advocate is that they can actually improve your quality of life now. No need to wait 30 years to start seeing benefits.

Immediate benefits of diversification

If you’re investing in individual stocks, you’re stuck constantly monitoring them. Not only is that a giant time-suck, but it’s stressful as well.

Invest instead in an extremely diversified portfolio, and free yourself (immediately) from having to worry about what happens to any given company.

Immediate benefits of passive investing

If you’re investing in actively-managed funds, there’s always the possibility that the fund manager will make some terrible mistake. Any time you hand your money over to somebody else to invest, there’s risk involved. And–at least in my experience–with risk comes worry.

Opt for a diversified portfolio of passively-managed funds and free yourself (immediately) from the worry that a fund manager is going to make a costly mistake with your money.

Immediate benefits of automation

We all know the feeling of having some big “to-do” hanging over our head. There’s a part of human nature that prevents us from fully enjoying anything until we’ve taken care of whatever responsibilities we’ve been putting off.

If you haven’t gotten started investing yet, you’ll be surprised at how much better you’ll feel as soon as you get the ball rolling with an automatic savings plan–automated 401k contributions, for instance.

Knowing that you’re on the way to building wealth gives you a (well-deserved) sense of accomplishment and goes a long way toward eliminating worries/stress about the future.

What benefits have you noticed?

Aside from the obvious financial benefits, have you found yourself enjoying any quality of life improvements as a result of implementing a prudent investing strategy?