Invest to Meet Your Goals

Finances

Jun 26

“Part 4 of the Money Management for Neurodivergents Series”

Author: Chris Kinion
Date: June 25, 2026

Disclaimer: "I am not a licensed financial advisor. The information on this site is for educational purposes only and should not be considered personal financial advice. All investments involve risk, and all decisions are made at your own risk."
Part 1: Meet Your Money Goals
Part 2: Budget to Meet Your Goals
Part 3: Save to Meet Your Goals
Part 4: Invest to Meet Your Goals
Part 5: Protect Yourself to Meet Your Goals

Outline

Introduction
What is Investing? Is it for Me?
Five Years of Sarah Meeting her Goals
The Lessons
Ethics Considerations
Other Kinds of Investments
Looking Ahead
Glossary
Further Research

Foreward

We chased one goal from the first post of this series: Have savings for when you can’t or don’t work. Investing is the second of the three major ways to care for yourself and the people closest to you.

This is the most complicated post of the entire series, and I cannot possibly cover every aspect of investing. I hope this helps you find your own path as a part of your lifelong financial education and teaches you that you can also meet your goals through investing.

-Chris

Introduction

I turn 50 this year. I say with confidence that the worst decisions of my life were made from fear.

Fear-based decisions led to most of my life’s regret: abandoned relationships, jobs I lost, opportunities I missed. Fear is human: it informs our decisions, but it shouldn’t control us.

Initially, I learned to live with fear by doing things that involve risk: I lifeguarded at the beach, I took classes at college, I rode motorcycles. Motorcycling especially taught me about “managing risk.” Decades later, I still discover new ways to manage risk.

We fear things because of risk: whenever we carry money into a store, drive a car, or talk to someone - all carry risk. We already have ways to manage those risks: we hide our money, drive defensively, and keep sensitive thoughts to ourselves until we know we can trust someone.

Investing carries risk, but it can also reward.

Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors of all time, said “If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.” To invest successfully, you must control your fear by managing your risk. And you manage that risk with a solid plan.

If you’re willing to face the risks of investing so you can meet your goals, keep reading.

What is Investing? Is it for Me?

Context

Simply put, investing requires you to spend time or money now on something that becomes more valuable later. Warren Buffett said, “The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself... The more you learn, the more you'll earn.” So an education, learning a trade, learning another language, exercising, sleeping well, reading books (especially non-fiction), having quality relationships, and getting counseling or a mentor are all ways you can invest in yourself!

Things like cell phones, video games, and cars lose value the moment you buy them; the notable exceptions are just that - exceptions. Remember that these things are expenses. If you want them, add them to your budget as an expense.

Warren Buffett said, “The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself... The more you learn, the more you'll earn.”

Warren Buffet also said, "Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." Investing takes time - a lot of time. The main reason a family’s wealth tends to fade away after several generations is because the first generation sacrificed to build that wealth, and the subsequent generations don’t spend their time growing it; they use it up. You will not get rich in five or ten years by investing. It will take decades. Starting early will give you a huge advantage!

Do you have to be smart or clever to invest? Warren Buffett explained his success, saying “We don't have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.” For you, this means having a budget, an emergency fund, and understanding how money works. It’s like basketball: if your team masters the fundamentals, you will win more than you lose. What your investments look like 40 years from now is more important than what they look like day-to-day, but your discipline today will reward you far into the future.

Basics of Investing

Investors make money from money in two main ways: 1) from lending money that gets paid back in interest and 2) buying businesses that pay them a portion of their profits. These loans and businesses are called assets because they hold value. We won’t get into other kinds of investments because they involve a lot more work to understand.

The first kind of asset is usually some kind of bond. A bond is a loan made to a corporation or municipality. Typically, the lower the rate, the more likely the lender will get paid back. Bonds with higher rates may reward more, but your risk of losing all your investment increases.

The second kind of asset usually involves stock. Stock is a portion of ownership in a company. If the company is profitable, stock owners get paid a portion of those profits. Companies sell stock in order to grow their companies or change ownership. If the company fails, the stock no longer has value. So buying individual stocks carries the risk of losing all your investment.

Investments require risk. But I will show you ways to manage that risk so that the winners will reward you when the losers do not.

Special Considerations

If you receive benefits like SSI, Medicaid and SNAP, you may only keep a limited amount and certain kinds of assets (both savings and investments) unless you participate in an ABLE account. If this is you, you could lose your benefits by following my advice. Seek help from a professional before moving forward.

What kind of debt do you have? Interest rates over 10% in the U.S. are generally considered “high interest”. In most cases, you will be better off paying off high interest debt than investing that money. Dave Ramsey doesn’t want you even thinking about investing until you pay off all debt (but a mortgage) and have a full emergency fund. But as Ramit Sethi points out, getting started is more important than perfection. You need to understand your debt situation before investing to make the best choice for you.

Finally, you will need to remember that the strategy I’m showing you requires you to put money aside for a very long time. Depending on your needs and income, there are all kinds of very important tax ramifications to consider. You must consider what you can pay yourself now and what you can give up to pay yourself later.

Five Years of Sarah Meeting her Goals

Sarah has been working hard since we last saw her. Over the past few years, she funded her savings accounts, set money aside for her deductibles, and grew her emergency fund. As a young adult, her career situation improved as she changed jobs. Now she’s down to one income, but it’s significantly more than the $30,000 she made before.

Sarah’s last two jobs offered a “retirement plan” called a 401k. Employers may offer plans with other names, depending on their legal status. Let’s look at her power moves as she advanced in her career.

Job 1

The first job that offered a 401k offered matching contributions for up to two percent of her pre-tax income. Even though she got a pay raise taking this job, she needed much of that additional income to cover her expenses and build her emergency fund. But she committed to contributing enough of her income to get the free “matched” contribution. She directed HR to automatically send a portion of each paycheck to her 401k account.

The investments she could purchase were very limited. She used this rule of thumb: if the investment was at least 10 years old and earned on average 10% per year over the last 10 years, she would consider it. She only found one fund that came close, so that’s what she selected.

Sarah’s 401k offered mutual funds. A mutual fund is an investment device managed by professionals that buy and sell stocks and bonds. Buying a mutual fund is a little bit like buying stock in a company that owns stock in a lot of other companies. You trust the mutual fund to increase in value and buy good companies in order to make you money. For that service, they will take a fee. As their portfolio grows in value, the shares and dividends (payments from profit) grow in value. The dividends were automatically reinvested in the mutual fund, so her gains (profits) grew value, too

Job 2

The second job also offered a 401k and better matching contributions. They offered a full match for the first 3% of contributions, then a half match for the next 2%. In effect, if Sarah contributed 5% of her income to her 401k, her company would contribute a total of 4% as well. That’s a value of nearly 9% of her income every month!

With the better pay of her second job, she started by contributing 5% and decided that she would up that by 1% every year she was there. After two years, she was contributing 7% and getting an additional 4% for free from her employer.

Sarah also noticed that the 401k from this company had better options that earned more. When she left Job 1, her old 401k started charging more fees that prevented her balance from growing. She called both banks for her old and new 401k and completed the paperwork to rollover (transfer the value of one account to another) her old account into the new one. When the rollover completed, she logged into her newer 401k and made sure all her funds were allocated (applied to an investment, not just sitting as cash).

Job 3

Sarah left Job 2 and took a job with a smaller company for another pay increase and a chance to do something with more responsibility. Sarah’s current job pays more than the last and has a SIMPLE IRA for a retirement plan. The investment choices are… just okay. She decided to update her strategy.

Still committed to increasing her retirement savings each year, she decides to contribute to the SIMPLE IRA enough to get the matching contribution. The remainder of her contribution will come out of her bank account after taxes.

At this point, she has an old 401k and a SIMPLE IRA which don’t give her all the options she wants. She needs retirement accounts where she can manage her money the way she wants and doesn’t charge outrageous fees. She narrows her choices down to Schwab and Fidelity, but ultimately Schwab gives her the most choices for her investments.

For her new plan to work, she has to open two accounts. The first account is a self-directed, Traditional IRA. She can rollover her old 401k into this account and purchase any number of excellent investments. While she is allowed to make limited contributions to this account, she will only use it for rollovers from old employer accounts. The second account is a Roth IRA. It only takes contributions from her after-tax money, and she can only contribute so much a year (and it changes every so often) and if she makes under a certain amount. She’s not terribly concerned about the maximum contribution since she could not reach it anytime soon, and she’s well under the maximum earning. She uses Schwab's automation to draft her account every pay period to fund the Roth IRA.

While she doesn’t have a lot of control over her investments with her employer plans, she really likes being able to pick her investments for her two new IRAs. She finds several index funds with low expense ratios (the fees a fund charges to manage it) that fits her plan and directs her investments into them.

Over just a few years, she now has about $15,000 in investments, much of which she controls directly from her Schwab accounts. That money will re-invest and grow over her lifetime, with the goal of allowing her to retire when she’s older.

The Lessons

Methodology

Sarah systematically managed her investments. These are the five simple steps to proactively manage your investments:

Step one: Open an account. If an employer offers matching funds, get those first.
Step two: Use automation to fund your accounts.
Step three: Make sure you buy investments and reinvest proceeds.
Step four: Increase your contributions annually and with pay increases.
Step five: Rollover old accounts to where you can get the most growth. It’s okay to have multiple accounts, but managing fewer accounts reduces your cognitive load.

Principles

Investing principles are like wisdom. They don’t have to be complicated to be right.

You can only build wealth by spending money on savings and investments.
Sarah invested for the very long-term. She won’t use her investments for decades.
Open new accounts and update your investing strategy whenever life circumstances change.
Automate investing to reduce cognitive load.
Stay organized. Know how to manage your investments and which company is managing them.
Warren Buffett stated, “If you don't feel comfortable owning something for 10 years, then don't own it for 10 minutes.” Define and stick to your investment values.
Investing means sacrificing a little now to have a lot later. Later comes 20, 30, or 40 years from now.
Balance your account based on your investment needs:
- Invest in funds that are more volatile but grow the most over the long run when you have 20 or more years to grow value
- Invest in funds that provide more stable value the closer you are to retirement to preserve the value you have created.
- Rebalance according to plan, not the stock market.
- Index funds allow you to grow value without having to pick winners

Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors of all time, said “If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.”

Other Thoughts

One article cannot possibly cover everything you need to know. However, I can share some quick wisdom that might help you.

Sarah used a 10%/10 year rule to guide her investment strategy. This reduced the risk her investments would underperform.
If an HSA was right for Sarah, she could use that to grow her money, too.
The Roth IRA has additional features that might help you to buy your first home or cover significant financial problems, but only as a last resort
Sarah keeps learning about money. This gives her the confidence to manage her various accounts. Warren Buffett said, “I think you should read everything you can. In my case, by the age of 10, I'd read every book in the Omaha public library about investing, some twice. You need to fill your mind with various competing thoughts and decide which make sense.” Buffett leveraged time and education to win at money. You have an advantage if you start early and get smart. But there is no replacement for financial education.
Having an emergency fund changed Sarah’s perspective. Once she saved $2,000, she didn’t feel like she was one crisis away from disaster. Once she reached $10,000 in her emergency fund, she felt empowered: she could breathe easier, could more easily change jobs, and cover any major emergency. Though psychological, her emergency fund rewarded her for her discipline and sacrifice before she began investing!

The more you specialize your investments, the greater the risk of not getting rewarded for your investment. Let your heart inform your decisions - not control them.

Ethics Considerations

If you don’t feel comfortable with the idea of owning a piece of every company in an index fund, you may wish to look at mutual funds and ETFs that specialize in ethical investing. When researching, look for terms like these:

ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) funds
Faith or values based funds
Impact investing
SRI (Socially Responsible Investing)

If these values are important to you, take your time and do the research. Every fund ranks and scores businesses differently, so finding one that aligns with your priorities will take time.

Another (highly relevant) tactic would also include investing in market sectors that do not include companies you object to. This might include index funds that focus on smaller businesses, certain technologies or certain products.

The more you specialize your investments, the greater the risk of not getting rewarded for your investment. Let your heart inform your decisions - not control them.

Other Kinds of Investments

Real Estate

Real estate is usually land with whatever buildings are on it. Real estate has a low rate of return as an investment. However, when cared for it usually maintains its value. Sometimes, improving the real estate (constructing a building, renting for income, providing access to a resource) can increase its value. Those outcomes are not guaranteed.

Most wealthy people own some real estate, and it serves as a place to hold value and may reduce the costs of a place to live (if you stay in a place more than 7 years). Warren Buffett has lived in his home since 1958! But property is expensive to purchase and maintain. Property is also difficult and expensive to sell. If you value flexibility and low cognitive load, you don’t need to buy property.

Cryptocurrency

People that push cryptocurrency investment follow two flawed trains of thought:

You’re buying a currency that people will use and it will increase in value.
You’re buying a currency with limited supply that will increase in value when you can’t get more.

For the first investor, would you spend $10,000 of your hard-earned money to buy Mexican Pesos or Japanese Yen? Probably not. Unless you know what you’re doing, that’s a troubling and difficult way to make money.

For the second investor, cryptocurrency has no intrinsic value. It has less substance than trading cards. But you can hold trading cards in your hand. Trading cards can engage your mind. What does cryptocurrency do? You buy and sell it until the government says you can’t. (This actually happened in China and India.)

Even people that know what they’re doing lose money trading cryptocurrency. It’s a lot of work with a lot of risk. I don’t recommend this as an investment for anyone, though it is an interesting hobby.

Precious Metals and Gems

You can purchase precious metals (like gold, silver, and platinum) from dealers who are happy to buy them back from you - at a severe discount. Precious metals are decent at preserving wealth but not creating wealth. If you were a billionaire, you’d probably have some locked away in a safe. For the rest of us, it costs money to buy, we lose money when we sell, and it costs more money to store (in a safe or lockbox).

I recommend minimally investing in heirloom jewelry that you will use and can be passed down to children and grandchildren. This includes things like wedding rings and some formal jewelry. That way, you are investing in the sentimental value of the object and the precious metal and gems that adorn them will last for centuries.

If you keep expensive jewelry, you should document and insure it with your home or renter insurance.

Real Estate, Cryptocurrency and Precious Metals Funds

Certain REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts), Mutual Funds, and ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) allow partial investment in real estate, cryptocurrency and precious metals. As I mentioned before, the more you specialize your investments, the greater the risk of not getting rewarded for your investment. These funds warrant additional scrutiny for ethical considerations, too.

I do not recommend these for beginning investors. If you wouldn’t invest in these things directly, why would you invest in them indirectly?

Commodities, Futures and Derivatives

These are advanced investing tools for buying and selling some kind of product. Warren Buffett described derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction.” These tools (and their misuse) significantly contributed to the financial crisis of 2008. They come with significant risk and minimal reward, so I never recommend these to beginning investors.

Looking ahead

What will Sarah do if she gets married, has children, or gets divorced? What if her partner has a different view of how to handle money? How will she care for the people she cares about most that depend on her if she’s unable to work? To answer these questions, meet me in the final part of this series: Protect Yourself to Meet Your Goals.

Glossary

Allocated - Money that has actually been applied to an investment rather than left sitting as idle cash in the account. (Until it's allocated, it isn't really invested.)

Assets - Things you own that hold value, such as the loans and businesses your money buys into. In investing, an asset is something you put money into expecting it to hold or grow in value over time.

Bond - A loan you make to a corporation or a municipality (a local government). In return, they pay you interest and give your money back on a set date. Generally steadier and lower-returning than stock.

Dividends - Payments made to shareholders out of a company's (or fund's) profits. They can be taken as cash or automatically reinvested to buy more shares.

ETF - (Exchange-Traded Fund) - A bundle of investments, much like a mutual fund, but one that trades on an exchange like a single stock. Often used as a low-cost way to own a broad mix of companies, including index and themed (e.g., ethical) funds.

Expense - A purchase that imposes a financial burden.

Expense ratio - The annual fee a fund charges to manage your money, expressed as a percentage. Lower expense ratios mean you keep more of your returns.

Gains - The profit on an investment: the increase in value above what you paid for it.

HSA (Health Savings Account) - A tax-advantaged savings account that allows individuals with a high-deductible health plan to save money for qualified medical expenses. Contributions to an HSA are made with pre-tax dollars, and funds can grow tax-free and roll over year to year.

Investing - The commitment of money or resources into assets with the expectation of generating a profit over time. Every investment requires risk.

Mutual fund - An investment vehicle managed by professionals who buy and sell a bundle of stocks and bonds on your behalf. You own a share of the whole bundle rather than picking individual companies yourself.

REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) - A company that owns or finances income-producing real estate. Buying shares of a REIT lets you invest in real estate partially, without buying a whole property yourself.

Rollover - Transferring the value of one retirement account into another (for example, moving an old 401(k) into a new one) without it counting as a taxable withdrawal.

Stock - A portion of ownership in a company. If the company is profitable, stockholders can receive a share of those profits, and the stock itself can rise (or fall) in value.

Volatility - How much an investment's price swings up and down over time. High volatility means big swings; low volatility means smaller changes.

Further Research

Dave Ramsey Resources

Dave Ramsey’s investment strategy

https://www.ramseysolutions.com/retirement/daves-investing-philosophy

Ramit Sethi Resources

The best investment strategies by income level (YouTube)

https://youtu.be/eaSBkX-Yg4s

How to Invest in Index Funds

https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/how-to-invest-in-index-funds/

Best IRA Accounts

https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/best-ira/