I know with chronic illness it's sometimes really hard to think too far ahead about our future. Especially when we worry about our lives daily. Did I remember to take my meds today? What am I having for lunch? What's my age again? There are also days when we are just too tired that we can barely get out of bed and shower. Some days we are jetting to multiple doctors appointments,  doing more lab work, more scans, more infusions, etc. Then there are those dreaded times when we get hospitalized and it feels like forever until we get to go home. Our everyday is not the norm and we continue to battle through it because we are warriors.  But, as much as I am focusing on today, I also want to focus on my future.

Taking care and investing in myself mentally, physically and financially is something that we all must do! I know my page is mainly to promote chronic illness/ my lupus experience, but I truly was curious and decided to create a poll whether people did any investing whether it be crypto, stocks, themselves or nothing at all. The majority was NO and those that said yes either said themselves or in stocks. It's not something that is taught in school and with everything going on in our daily lives its probably not going to be a priority to research and learn.

But, I just want to put some numbers into perspective. Imagine investing $50 a month for 20 years at an average rate of return of 8% you would have approx $29k. If you left that in the bank you would only have $12k.  If you invested the same amount for 30 years you would have approx $71k. If you left that in the bank you would only have $18k.

Now, imagine investing $500 a month for 20 years at an average rate of return of 8% you would have approx $205k. If you left that in the bank you would only have $120k. If you invested the same amount for 30 years you would have approx $704k. If you left that in the bank you would only have $180k. 

What a difference investing makes and the amount of time you are in the market. The younger you are the more time you have for your money to grow! We have to make our money work for us and the only way is if we invest some of it. Picking good index funds and the power of compounding interest will slowly but surely increase our wealth. I suggest opening a fidelity account and investing into FXAIX, FNILX, FSPGX, etc. 

For those who are a bit riskier and want to invest in stocks like Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Nio, etc or crypto like bitcoin, ethereum, algo, etc you can click on the link below. Bigger the risk, bigger the reward they say. But, sometimes you can crash and burn easily with these stocks. But, overall, time in the market is what is most important. Sometimes you get lucky and can day trade a deal and get profit within a few days. Sometimes it takes months or even years.  Imagine buying a stock of tesla in 2019, when it was $69. Today tesla is worth $738.85. So, imagine owning 10 stocks and you held it through. Your initial investment of $690 grew to $7388 which equals approx $6698 in profit. Imagine if that stock grew to $1000 or $2000 in 10 years. You would be making double, triple, etc. But, remember to always do your own research when picking stocks. 

Click here to Join Webull to start buying stocks. If you deposit $100, you'll get 2 random free stock and so will I. 

Click here to Join Coinbase to start buying crypto. If you buy $100 of crypto, you'll get $10 of bitcoin for free and so will I.  

If this is something not feasible for yourself, please pass this info onto your parents, siblings, spouses, friends. We really need to start investing and thinking about our future and doing more research on this. Saving all our money in the bank is not going to do us anything with interest rates at .001%. That's merely pocket change. In my next posts, I'll discuss why I stopped saving my money in big banks like Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.

If you would like to learn more, please comment below. 

XOXO,

Geri