It is fairly obvious, but there are people out there that have written 200 pages self-help books and made a fortune out of them by simply stating this simple fact of life: "you can invest your savings. If you ain´t got any, you ain´t gonna invest". (I admit you could argue that you can borrow but still nobody ain´t lending ya if you ain´t gonna givvet baksh).
The basic concepts that will save you a 15 bucks book:
- you invest so that your money works for you. Even if you cannot drop your job, you can still live a bit better with extra income.
- Investing is sacrificing something today to get something tomorrow. This is just a definition. You save x today because you want 2x tomorrow or in year or whenever.
- The first step to invest is saving part of your income. No savings, no future.
- If you have credits unpaid (other than mortgages or other asset backed credits), you pay those first because they charge you a lot.
And from here we could start speaking on how are you going to save regularly, if it is going to be 10% of your income, or 5% or 50%, how are you going to learn about investing, etc...
I agree with you that investing use savings or cold money. In financial planning, we must be able to separate daily needs (living), future needs (saving), and entertainment (playing). There is also an emergency fund, which is funds that we deliberately reserve if there is a sudden need at any time. Both emergency funds and investments should use cold cash. It means separate from daily needs. In order for this investment money and emergency funds to be separated from daily needs, it is better if we put it in a different place from our bank account or ATM. For investment, we already know the purpose, for example for vacation or wedding expenses. Meanwhile, emergency funds are for sudden needs that we don't know about, such as if you get laid off or lose your laptop for work.