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...
Even if you don't have the intention to invest, i think saving is still very necessary because that will back up you when you ran out of funds in the future. But it will be more advantageous if you have something to do with your savings, specifically iinvesting it, as it tends to double your money once it starts to profits. However, investing will not work if you started out from taking loans. Remember, there is no certainty in the outcome of your investment, whether you make profit or not, you will still be paying your monthly amortization plus interest so that it won't cause you troubles in the future.