Excusing ‘No time to invest’ has become a National Problem!

It’s a known fact that the majority of the Indian population do not invest their money. Apart from little allocation in a few traditional investment options like gold, savings, fixed deposits or LICs, the involvement of Indians in the higher-rewarding investment opportunities like Stocks, mutual funds, ETFs is quite minimal. If we look into the equity market, hardly 2.5% of Indians are actively involved.

Now, according to the non-investing population, the two biggest reasons that stop them from investing are ‘lack of education’ and ‘lack of time’.

For the first part i.e. the lack of education, it might be a little fault of our education system, somewhat of the parents but mostly of the individuals. Investing is not a rocket-science that only people with high-IQ can pursue. Anyone can learn and start investing. People should not always blame others if they are not ready to learn. There are a lot of free resources available online and offline, which is enough to get adequate investing knowledge.

Anyways, the other common excuse that most people make for not investing is that they don’t have enough time to invest. “No time to research where to invest!”. A few may even argue that setting up a trading account and making investments takes a lot of time which prevents them from investing.

However, all these are just excuses. In this online era, setting up demat and trading account is very fast, paperless and hassle-free. In fact, you can set up your trading account with online brokers like Zerodha, within 10 minutes. The problem is that you never researched where to open your trading account or how to get started.

It all depends on your priority…

“It takes too long to invest” — This is just another myth among beginners. However, it does not take as much time as every newbie assumes and investing habit can be easily adjusted in your day to day life.

If you can make time to go to the gym everyday, dining out every other day, partying on weekends, or going on vacations every three months, then stop saying you don’t have time. As a matter of fact, if you are ready to spend 2–4 hours every week, it is good enough to start and monitor your investments.

Further, even if you have a very hectic routine, you can steal a few minutes here and there. Like while traveling in your cab/metro, during your lunchtime, or even while having your coffee. At these time, instead of scrolling on facebook, you can do your investment research using mobile apps, which are super easy, fast and provides with all the facilities that you need.

Moreover, even if you are not ready to put a lot of efforts or time, there are still many easier routes to start investing. For example– investing in mutual funds or investing through Robo-advisors. If you believe that you won’t even be able to spend 2–4 hours per week for your investments, then pick a fund and start a monthly SIP. All these investment options do not take a lot of time.

Having no time to invest in a lame excuse for non-investors. The thing is these people never prioritize investing. They always keep procrastinating to invest for later, arguing that they do not have enough income/savings. Here, people are not investing because of the lack of priority, not the lack of time!

You are losing ‘Time’…

“Start investing early” — this is the best advice that anyone can give you.

When you begin investing early, time is in your favor and so is the power of compounding. You will be way ahead of your peers towards building your investment corpus if you start investing even just a few years prior to them.

When you are excusing not enough time to invest, you are losing time that could have been your biggest ally. Remember, time can help or hurt you.

Also read: Bunty and Babli: A financial story of how Bunty lost Rs 1,29,94,044!

Sometimes later becomes never…

Every week, I receive dozens of emails from people in their 50s or 60s who have never invested in the equity market and now planning to enter.

Now, by no means, I am saying that people in their 50s or 60s cannot invest. As a matter of fact, it’s never too late to get started. However, these people kept excusing ‘no time to invest’ during their adulthood, which later resulted in them not to invest at all.

If you are young, you have a great advantage. Instead of throwing it away by making a lame excuse, take the best out of it.

Besides, you do not need to have a high paying job or large savings to start investing. Even people with medium to low salary range can invest smartly to reach their goals. If you are not sure how much, then a monthly SIP of Rs 5,000 is good enough to begin. That doesn’t sound too much to invest, does it?

No one cares about your financial goals except you…

Your friends will encourage you to party harder. You relatives will emotionally charge you to buy a fancy car/house to impress them. Your neighbors will challenge you to live above your standards to match them. But no one will motivate you to save more or to invest more.

No one cares whether your net worth or total asset is growing overtime or not. Everyone is dealing with their own financials/hardships and they don’t have any time for you.

The only one who cares about your financial situation is yourself. If you do not take charge of your investments, no one else is going to do it for you. The only way to secure your future and have enough money in your bank account is by becoming proactive and responsible for your financials.

Closing Thoughts

Stop excusing that you do have spare time to invest, instead start acting. Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. If you are not investing, it’s not because you don’t have time. It’s because you do not understand the importance of investing.

And five years from now, you’ll regret why didn’t you start investing early.

Finally, as a bonus, if you are ready to take your first steps in the world of investment, here’s a free guide that can help you to get started. Good luck!