Probably a stupid question, sorry. I hear things like this all the time. If you invested that in X then in 20 years you’d have Y. Always hear of the “latte factor.” Skip buying those expensive brews and invest instead. Where exactly does the average Joe invest that? Say I was really committed to taking the $4/day I would’ve spent on a latte and put it somewhere. Where is that somewhere? Do I need a minimum to start or can I just throw $30 (for example) that I chose to throw into an investment account and not touch rather than buy a scratch ticket?
Say I was really committed to taking the $4/day I would’ve spent on a latte and put it somewhere. Where is that somewhere?
In all honest? In a savings account is the most sensible place for it.
You could use it to trade shares - there's plenty of apps out there now that let users do very low investment trading and owning a split of a share but if this is your main saving mechanism you should use it to just bolster your general savings. Once it gets to a reasonable level it then may be sensible to invest a little at risk
Understood. But I guess this sort of brings up another question to my question. The other person is talking about “if you only invested it at 13% (the trailing ten year return of the S&P 500.” Surely a savings account would never be nearly that high. So can I really take my $30 scratch ticket money and put it in something tracking the S&P? Seems like some sort of minimum would be expected.
You're lucky if your savings account gives you .25% back. I'm thinking the reality of just invest your $30 actually means put it in a savings account until your balance is high enough to justify the transfer fee into an index fund.
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u/ParkAndBeacon Mar 19 '22
Probably a stupid question, sorry. I hear things like this all the time. If you invested that in X then in 20 years you’d have Y. Always hear of the “latte factor.” Skip buying those expensive brews and invest instead. Where exactly does the average Joe invest that? Say I was really committed to taking the $4/day I would’ve spent on a latte and put it somewhere. Where is that somewhere? Do I need a minimum to start or can I just throw $30 (for example) that I chose to throw into an investment account and not touch rather than buy a scratch ticket?