Trick or Treat – October 2019

Pumpkin carving. Fall Foliage in New England. Halloween Costumes. Spooky, creepy ghouls, goblins and ghosts.

In our apartment building in New York there is a sign-up sheet for Trick or Treaters. If you are okay with kids coming to your apartment, then you put your apartment number on a sheet that is handed out to the Trick or Treaters.

Even though we were in an apartment building I would still go “all in”, decorating our door, carving pumpkins, playing creepy music and having my camera ready for some very cute costumes.

But one year I had the audacity to set up a table in the hallway for my carved pumpkins. I put tiny votive candles in the pumpkins right under the sprinkler system, just in case. Of course, I light much bigger candles inside my apartment all the time and have not set off a sprinkler yet.

It didn’t take long for one mother to read me the riot act about how stupid could I be lighting tiny votives?? Of course, the children could be hurt, burned or worse, and I risked setting the entire building on fire.

The kids loved the pumpkins and decorations by the way.

She was so vociferous the tiny votive candles blew out on their own.

We survived Halloween without any death and destruction, and had too much candy left over. 

Halloween used to be fun. It should still be fun. 

Investing on your own isn’t spooky or scary. 

Don’t let something that seems tiny and innocuous (a votive candle for example) become a big thing  (there is NO WAY I can invest on my own).

When I started The Modest Economist, I thought “if I am going to go through with this, I have to have some fun”. Have fun and do my best to be funny because having a sense of humor often gets lost in the seriousness of making an investment decision.

I need to have a belly laugh once in a while.  

This was a big challenge because I had no examples of economists who are also stand-up comedians. Or investors who are funny, except for Burton Malkiel author of “A Random Walk Down Wall Street”.

On The Modest Economist website, I have written an article called  “Investing Made Easy”. My main point in the article is that mutual funds and exchange traded funds make it easy for you to invest without having to choose a stock or bond. 

Choosing an individual stock or a bond to invest in seems like a quaint, old-fashioned way of investing.

But I think picking an individual stock or bond is where the fun is.

If you still have a fear about doing some investing on your own, think about this.

Many of the barriers to investing that existed before are gone. 

It is easy to open an account online. You don’t need  lot of money, maybe $500 or so. You don’t have to go to a stranger and give them all your personal details. There is no reason to feel intimated by the process.

But here is the best part. 

Let’s say you buy a stock. The price goes up and you decide to sell. When you sell you do not receive a message that says  “hey, you’re a woman, so we are only going to give you 80% of your money”.

That would be ridiculous, right?  Investing is not gender based. 

There is no glass ceiling.

With the focus on equal pay for women, more women in management positions and many of the issues facing women in the workplace, there is no better way to level the playing field. Once you start  investing the experience and knowledge that comes with it is invaluable.

Two things happen when you start to invest on your own. The first thing you are going to do is place a trade. Yes, you are going to buy a few shares of a company, a mutual fund or an ETF.

It almost doesn’t matter what it is. It is the process of making a trade that you want to learn. 

Once you do, once you place that first trade on your own, a smile will come across your face and you think “wow, I did it and nothing scary happened.” 

You are not making a life changing decision. You are taking one small step to experience how investing really works. 

It is a Treat not a Trick.

Any ghouls or goblins that have been scaring you off need to get out of the way.

Click here to read “How to Buy a Stock.”