I meet alot of people who say they are "saving" money.  But bank checking or savings account paying .01% is actually losing money to inflation. 

Money market funds pay more (1-5%) and you can take money in and out with no penalty or time lock. 

Save 3-6 months of money in an emergency fund before you get started in investing.  You can park that money in a money market fund, cd, bonds...something stable then invest the rest. 

Take your age and minus 100 or 110 and that should give you an idea of how much to put in stocks vs bonds.  

At least half of your investments should be in foundational ETFs.  Then the rest can be invested in individual stocks.  Take a look at video 5 for a list of foundation ETFs. 

Use this list of benchmark ETFs from Schwab, Vanguard, or iShares to create your foundation.  Don't just buy the SP500 as international is an important part of diversifying your portfolio.  

ETFs (exchange traded funds) can be bought and sold throughout the day vs mutual fund orders are only executed end of day, so you never know what price you're getting.  Also, some mutual funds especially in your 401K have management fees up to a 2% eating into your profits vs ETFs which low .03% .03% management fees.  Consider rolling over your 401K. 

For every stock or ETF you buy, you can put a trailing stop loss (TSL).  The TSL % follows the high, so you capture the high and it automatically sells when it drops.  Don't let your winners become losers without capturing some profits or minimizing losses.  Schedule time with me to set your trails.

Fractional shares can be bought for Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, etc.  for as little as $1.  Don't wait until you have a large chunk of money to get started. Time is money, get started early, any small amount helps.  Schedule time with me to get started.

Should you buy that stock? My philosophy is: if it beats benchmark, buy it.  If it doesn't beat benchmark, don't buy it, buy the benchmark instead.  Make sure you have an emergency cash reserve and have ETFs as your foundation before buying individual stocks.  For every stock/ETF you buy, set a trailing stop loss. 

RoboAdvisors will allocate your money based on a risk profile questionnaire.  You can revise your portfolio to be more in stocks or bonds.  You can do both a Robo account and your own stock account (I do both).  Robo accounts will track you to benchmark. And you can take money in and out, same as you would do with a brokerage account. 

After deciding to buy the stock, I always buy a stock with a trailing stop.  In this video, I show how I do this in ThinkorSwim, Schwab's trading platform.  Plus a brief look at sector charts. 

I created this mobile and desktop app that you can use that compares the stock to benchmarks.  Most apps just show you the stock chart and not how it compares to benchmark. This app compares the stock to benchmark and has the foundational ETFs so you can get started in KickstartMyWealth today!