Why do people want gold? You can’t eat it. You can’t power your house with it. And yet, it has held value for thousands of years.

The first thing to understand is that an investment account is just a tool. It’s a place to hold your money so you can put it to work in things like stocks, bonds, or index funds. Think of it like a garage for your money. You’re not just parking it there to sit still—you’re giving…

There’s an old saying that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is today. Investing works the same way. If you’ve been waiting, now is your moment to start. You don’t need a perfect plan or a big lump sum to start investing. You just need to start.

These are simply different types of assets you can invest in. Think of them like ingredients in a recipe. Each one plays a different role, and when used together, they can make a more balanced dish—or in this case, a more stable investment portfolio.

Compound interest is what happens when your money earns money, and then that money earns more money, and so on. It’s like planting a tree that grows more branches, and each branch grows its own tiny trees. Over time, the growth starts to feel a little magical—even though it all comes down to basic math.

Dollar-cost averaging (DCA) is a simple strategy with a big impact. It means investing a fixed amount of money at regular intervals, no matter what the market is doing. In this case, that could be $25 every week into an index fund, a mutual fund, or even individual stocks. Instead of trying to guess when…