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...
This is the most basic step before investing. What happens after you got money? You invest. But before that, you have to know the risks and possible consequences of your actions. Probably the best advice before investing is that, you allocate an amount that you live without and invest it. Each month you should allocate a part of your hard earned income and invest what you can afford to lose in your savings.