Should I invest my savings or keep them in the bank as an emergency fund when I’m still young?

Good question!

Assuming you have an adequate emergency fund that you feel comfortable with, you don’t want to keep the extra money in the bank. Most new investors make the mistake of just trying their hand at investing with no mentor helping them and this often results in them having bad losses.

The best plan would be to keep an emergency fund but not in the bank, to actually keep the money as cash where you can put your hands on it in 30 minutes or less. People that leave their emergency funds in banks or other places sometimes are surprised when the funds are frozen.

Banks can freeze an account for many reasons. It is fine to keep some money in banks but you don’t want to keep your emergency money in a bank since if an emergency happens you may not have adequate time to get to the bank.

The key thing you need is a mentor that can help you with learning how to invest. The mentor should be able to teach you different strategies so in the future you know how to answer this question on what to do and where to invest.

You need to find a mentor to help you. Or, if you don’t want to find a mentor, get one hundred books from the library on investing and read them all. Then you can make a better informed decision. When I train mentees I focus on giving them the education they need to be successful, not teaching them the one thing that they want to learn.

Mentees come to me not knowing anything with a shiny object syndrome where they think that X or Y investment strategy their friend is doing or someone on YouTube is perfect.

These mentees often don’t know the basics of what is the difference between bond, equity, notes, etc. They can’t describe the relationship between interest rates and bond prices or how to evaluate risk through proper due diligence. All these skills can be learned.

Once you have this personal financial education you will know what options are available and be able to make intelligent and informed decisions.

When I mentor young entrepreneurs I spend time talking to them to understand how they think about business and where the gaps in their knowledge are. Each of them has weak points and these weak points are what I focus on. I don’t teach them what they want to know, I teach them what they need to know.

Many of them are not even aware of the massive gaps in their knowledge and how it will create problems for them later as an entrepreneur. I think it is irresponsible mentorship to just teach the one thing that a mentee wants to learn and not correct their weak points and mistakes.

Yes, it is not easy. It takes a commitment of time and money to learn how to invest. You can either pay money to a mentor that can help you or you can pay money by trying deals without having someone help you and losing money - either way you will pay money for your education.

You either will pay by learning from experience losing money on real investments or by learning from an experienced mentor. The most important thing is to keep a positive attitude and never quit.

I hope that helps and good luck with your investing!

Benjamin Z Miller
www.benjaminzmiller.com