It is best to have a short-term, mid-term, and long-term investment plan when it comes to investing. Most people don’t have any decent investment plan. Therefore, it is important to develop investment strategies to ensure you have a plan for each investment goal stage.
It is recommended that you hire a professional financial planner or advisor, or investment broker to help you create the strategies that will work best for you. These professionals can help you save and invest wisely through tried-and-true investment planning.
You can also handle investing in your thorough research and forming manageable investment plans. The most important thing to remember when it comes to investing is that you have to have strategies and sound planning to make them work. Here are some investment strategies every investor should know.
Setting Time Goals
When you are setting time goals, it is important to have your goals in increments of time. The suggestion would be short-term investment goals, mid-term, and long-term investment goals. This is usually set in the following increments: one-year goals, five-year goals, ten-year goals, and retirement goals.
These goals are often easier said than done, even with the best financial planner or investment strategies. It is especially difficult to set these goals without knowing what the future holds for employment, income, and health.
However, you should not let the unknown future stop you from goal-setting. How to accomplish those goals may have to be adjusted over time, but what you want to achieve financially for one year, five years, ten years, and retirement can be less adjustable.
Short-Term Goals
Your short-term investment and savings goals should include a budget and how you plan to invest and save within your current budget. Budgeting is something many people avoid because it exposes where they may be spending money they shouldn’t spend. However, setting a budget to plan for investments is essential to accomplish your short-term financial goals.
Current Account Balance
You have to consider your current bank balances, including both checking and savings. Short-term goals should include a padded checking account and an emergency fund. Your current balances are important for investing and setting goals and are also important to expose where you are vulnerable.
Short-Term Investments
Short-term investments are those that will either have a quick return on your investment or those investments that will be expected to give your returns in less than five years. These investments are generally interest-gaining investments you can collect shortly.
Some examples are checking and savings accounts that gain interest and other accounts that can be accessed immediately. Short-term investments can also be through the stock exchange on stocks you quickly turn around.
The most important thing to remember about short-term investments is that you will use these investments as an additional income stream. These investments are not about the future but rather about the present.
Mid-Term Investments
Often when it comes to the mid-term investment plans you should make, it is similar to the long-term plan. These investments are those you are expecting to let stew for a while, and when they are cashed in, they will be used to fund other investments or possibly large purchases you were looking to make within the next five years.
Mid-term investments could be stocks, bonds, CDs, and mutual funds. You may want to consider investments that will not let you access the funds without penalties until five years of maturity. These investments may be lower-risk investments or higher risk depending on your risk tolerance.
Long-Term Investments
These investments should be well considered for your ten-year plan. First, you need to decide where you want to be financially in ten years. This thought of your financial future should be considered as an individual unless you are married at the time of investment planning.
Even if you are in a marriage, you should both consider investments as individuals and as a couple. The main point to planning investments that take you to the ten-year mark is to have the money you can count on at different increments in your life.
In many cases, unless you are using them to fund purchases or pay for higher education and other financial needs, it is a great idea to reinvest or consider leaving the investments in place for retirement or a further increment. The long-term investment point is to invest in stocks or mutual funds and other long-term parking investments such as your companies 401K program and leave it untouched for the long-term.
Retirement Investments
Retirement investments are just like they sound. These are investments specifically geared towards supplementing social security. In many cases, long-term and retirement goals can be similar. However, the main difference is these investments should be made entirely with retirement in mind.
These investments could be slow to mature but mature at larger increments as the years march forward. These investments will also need consideration as to how much money you need to live on per year for a standard life expectancy along with the lifestyle you want to live.
Conclusion
Investments are something that should be carefully considered and calculated no matter what the time increments are. When investing, the important thing to remember is your risk tolerance and the goals you want to achieve.
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