How to Actually INVEST in Yourself

Now what does it actually mean to invest in yourself? Like actually.

Let’s make this clear. Investing in yourself is not just about investing money so that you can have more of it in the future.

Investing in yourself is also more about investing for your future self, so that your future self will thank you later.

And remember, money isn’t the only thing you invest. You also invest time… and that’s the more important asset than money. Why’s that? Well money you can always get back, but time once it passes, it’s gone.

This blog post will outline how you can invest for yourself in your areas of your life. They include:

• Finances (the obvious one!)
• Health
• Personal Development
• Learning
• Relationships
• Social & Fun

You’ll see in this blog post how investing in yourself is all about investing in your future, and building your future.

FINANCES

When you think about investing in yourself, the first thing you have probably thought of are your finances. That is the most important one.

**just a disclaimer, I am not a financial expert in any way. This is just what had worked best for me from my personal experience, and what benefited me the most. You should definitely check with a financial expert with your specific financial needs.

If you had googled or searched up YouTube videos on how to invest your money, you probably got a whole range of different ways that you can invest… honestly that can get overwhelming!

However, I have learned for myself how investing in your finances is not just about actually investing…. and wait what do I mean by this?

What I mean by this is that investing your money is not just the actual investments you make whether that’d be in stocks or in property. Investing in your money actually involves a lot of things.

You have to consider that before you invest into anything, your finances actually need to be in order, and that you regularly manage your finances so that you know where your money is going. It makes sense because the last thing you want is to invest in something, and then something unexpected happens, and our finances are not properly managed.

I have a previous blog post on a weekly financial management routine that you can use to manage your finances. Pretty much, including some bits and pieces from there, this is the first important way to invest into yourself in terms of your finances:

Cutting Down Method

The cutting down method is one method I talked about in the blog post on managing your finances. It’s where you cut down costs that you don’t really use. This is where you can really reflect on whether you’re currently investing your money into the right things.

Reflect on whether you actually use that streaming service subscription or that gym membership…. is that something that you’re still willing to invest your money into? Maybe, you need to go to the gym more to improve your health, and you need to watch less TV. Hence, you’ll probably most likely willing to invest your money more into that gym membership than the streaming service subscription.

Look at what you’re currently spending and see if it’s something you’re willing to invest your money into, or if you should just cut it out. One question that you can ask yourself is that if what you’re purchasing right now is actually going to benefit you in the future. For example, going back to our past example, a gym membership will benefit us in the future because it will improve our health, but a streaming service subscription will not.

Know your non-negotiable spending

Of course, we are all for saving money for the future, and resisting present purchases. However, as always there are exceptions. In the present moment, you probably have highly important costs such as your rent, your utility bills, your food, or your transportation. They are very important even though they are “not for your future” because obviously if you don’t pay for any of them, you don’t have a place to live or food to eat.

It’s important that while you should save and invest money for your future, you should also know exactly what you need to spend for those non-negotiable costs. This is the time when your present costs are more important than your future costs.

For example, your future costs will be more important than your present costs if you’re deciding between putting money for a future deposit for a house, or for the new iPhone. You probably want to choose putting that money for the future costs rather than the new iPhone because the iPhone probably would lose its value over the years.

Your present costs will be more important than your future costs if you’re deciding between putting money for your rent, or future deposit for your house. You probably want to choose the rent, because otherwise you won’t have a place to live.

Weekly Financial Routine

An in depth step by step to your weekly financial routine will be in this blog post, but managing your finances regularly is one of the first most important investments you can make to yourself for your finances.

The weekly financial routine involves:

• Noting down your expenses.
• Noting down your income.
• Creating a spending plan each week to make sure that you’re not spending more than you are earning.
• Making sure you include your savings – that’s the ultimate INVESTMENT to yourself. Your future self will thank you for that!

If you are thinking of actually investing your money into investments into the future, you can also save money for that.

When you manage your finances in the present, you save yourself from a lot of stress in the future, and saving yourself from stress in the future is already a good investing you made to yourself.

That’s why I’m not going to mention anything about what investments to make, because the point that I really wanted to address was that it’s important to get your finances together first, before you think about how you can invest your money.

Health

You may have heard of the saying… “Health is Wealth” and that is true, because if your health is not really good, it’s going to be harder to do the things that we have to do and want to do.

That’s why, it’s so important to include your health as one of the ways to invest in yourself. Your health is the physical driving force of your life. You may have heard of this before – someone who sacrificed their health for a lot of money is not going to be able to enjoy that money. I’ll admit, it sounds extreme when I first heard it, but it makes sense!

While you do need to make sacrifices to reach some of the goals that you want to accomplish, we have to consider whether that’d sacrifice would actually be worth it or detrimental. That’s why, here are some ways to invest time and money into yourself with your health:

Healthy Eating

You probably heard of many tips to cook and prepare your own meals rather than ordering fast food or takeout.

Yes, fast food and takeout is convenient and cheap in the short term, but you also have to think of the long term as well.

Imagine ordering $15 on lunch every day for work. Assuming you work for five days, and 48 weeks, you end up spending $3600 in a year…. that’s a lot of money that you could’ve used to invest into something else.

That’s why it may be worth to do some meal prepping. Not only do you save money from impulsively buying food because you didn’t have time to prepare something, you also give yourself a chance to make those meals a healthier one ahead of time.

Exercise

You can invest your money into your exercise through a gym membership or a personal trainer, if you’re confident that you’re able to follow through, because of how important it is to your health.

However, if you’re tight on finances, you can invest time in doing free workouts. You have tons of YouTube videos out there with many workouts to choose from… from intense to easygoing workouts, there’s literally no excuse!

You can even go for a run or a nature walk, and the only investment you make is time. Exercise is so accessible to you, you just need to find time to invest in it.

If it’s important to you, this will be an easy breeze. Just think about it, you only really need 30 minutes minimum to set aside, and then you have 23 hours and 30 minutes of the day left! Invest the time so that your body will thank you later.

Other ways to invest in your health

Then, other ways to invest in your health is also maybe getting a health tracker like FitBit or an Apple watch, which will be a good tool to help you keep track of your steps, exercise, and what you’re doing to motivate yourself to get fit.

Invest in getting a 2L water bottle (which is actually a cheap investment!) to make sure that you are having your water intake.

Invest time during the day to move around. Especially if you’re working and sitting down all day, invest just 5 minutes every hour to move around and move your body!

Most importantly, invest time to get enough sleep. If you sacrifice your hours of sleep to be more productive, but during the day you can’t seem to get focused and concentration, you actually hurt your productivity. So technically, by getting sleep and well-rested for good concentration during your work day, sleep is being productive.

Personal Development

We’ll break this down to how you can invest your money and time into your personal development and personal growth.

Investing Money

When investing your money into your personal development, there are a few ways that you can do so.

The first way is when you invest them into personal development books.

They range from about $15-$30 depending on what bookstore you go to. They will probably cost more than that in some places, but if you look in the right places, you can get the most affordable price for it.

But instead of looking at them as a waste of money, look at is as an investment with a bigger return (because that’s what an investment is for right?). Look at it as an investment with a bigger return that will be lifelong.

Think about this – if you got a book to improve your mindset, your habits, your relationships, your personal growth, or your confidence, and you apply all the things you learn, and those areas got improved – that’s already a big return. Yes, it’s not monetary, but you developed and improved on a certain area of your life that is going to benefit you in many ways! Those are the sorts of things that last longer than the fast food you buy, or the clothes you impulsively bought.

Another way you can invest your money is into online courses and e-books. If you feel that a specific online course is going to help you improve your skills for a job, or help you build confidence, while the return may not be monetary, it’s going to be a greater return than the fast food you buy impulsively.

Investing time

I can honestly say that your personal development is 100% worth your time.

If you study, you know that making the time for a study routine is going to worth it, because it will help you get the grades you want and eventually the qualification you’re working towards.

That’s why, if you create a routine where you implement personal development and personal growth, it’s going to help you grow yourself, and that’s ultimately the lifelong return. Definitely read my blog post on how to create a study routine for your personal growth!

I honestly don’t see the logic of thinking that personal development is a waste of time. When it comes to growing yourself and becoming a better version of you, it’s going to be worth the time, won’t it?

Learning & Education

Your learning of course, is not just your personal development, it also extends to all other areas of your life… including your work and studies.

For instance, if you’re studying in college/university, you probably have paid for tuition (or going to pay for tuition), so you’re already investing money in it anyway.

So if you’re already investing money into your education, why not make the most of it and invest your time in it? You don’t want to waste your time with bad study habits don’t you? Not only are you already paying for it, but if you’re studying a degree that is going to help you in your future career, it’s going to be worth investing your time in your studies to build your expertise.

Even when you’re investing money in resources such as your textbooks. Even though it’s a a requirement to purchase those textbooks, look at it as an investment to your learning and building expertise for your future career, rather than a burden purchase.

And if you’re not studying anymore and you’re working, or even working on a business, you can invest your money into courses. If you’re a bit hesitant on that, think about this.

A car that you buy is going to devalue over the next five years. But a course that you buy that will help you launch your business, if you applied everything in that course, and you end up with a successful profitable business that came from applying what you learned in that course…. it’s a much bigger return higher than the price you initially paid for the course.

This goes for anything, before you purchase something, you have to look at the potential return you’ll get from investing into it… whether it’s monetary or not!

Then we have one more which is investing your time to improve your skills. Of course, you always want to improve your skills to get better for you. But when you think about it, when your skills improve, you’re not the only one that benefits from it.

If you have a job or a business where you’re helping people, the best thing you can do for them is to enhance your skills and be the best at what you do. Investing time and even money to improving those skills are never going to be a waste of time.

Relationships – family and friendships

This goes for all sorts of relationships in your inner circle – your family, your friends, your co-workers, or your actual relationship…

When it comes to investing money, this is not to say that you have to spend a lot of money for your family and your friends. This is because you would probably know that everyone appreciates time together more than gifts… the most important gift you can give to someone is your time with your undivided attention.

Think about this – when you look back at your memories with your family and friends, what do you remember immediately? The gifts they had given you or the time you spent together? Invest time in making those memories, over investing money to give them gifts.

This is not to say to never give gifts, and that giving gifts have no value… you can absolutely still give and receive gifts! You just have to remember that you want to prioritise having time with them over giving gifts, because at the end of the day, you can always give someone a gift, but you can never get your time back.

Social & Fun

Okay, get ready to disagree (or agree) with me on this…

It’s also worth it to invest in your social life and fun experiences….

Wait what?

Okay, here’s what I mean by this…

Investing in your social life

What I mean by investing in your social life is investing time to meet people, new people outside your regular circle of family and friends. What we had talked about in the previous point on relationships are people that you already know and formed relationships with. This is about meeting new people to expand that circle.

Invest time in meeting new people. If you have an interest for sports, go to events where you meet people with that same interest. If you have an interest for writing, meet people with that same interest. If you want to build your network, invest time in attending networking events.

My favourite apps to use are Meetup and Eventbrite to find events where I get to meet people. Along the way you may discover something that you’ve never done before, and it’s worth trying it out to see if it’s something you’ll end up enjoying! It brings me onto my next point…

Investing in fun experiences

By investing in fun experiences, I mean fun experiences where you genuinely enjoy yourself and discover yourself in the process.

Remember what I said just a second earlier about going on apps like Meetup and Eventbrite and come across activities that you have never done before? That’s the time to try it!! I’ll admit, the more “scary” part is meeting new people, but that’s actually a big fat bonus! You have nothing to lose by trying something out if you think it’s going to be something that you’ll enjoy… but you never know until you try it!

Another way to invest in fun experiences is also travel! I have a whole section of travel blogs of places I’ve previously gone to, and honestly travelling is something worth investing money on because the experiences last a lifetime.

Maybe your countries’ borders (like mine as of currently in August 10 2021) are closed and you can’t travel. You can go domestically and go interstate, or even just local! Invest into experiences that you have never done before, just like we had mentioned earlier on finding them on MeetUp. And there are also plenty of activities on there where you don’t even have to spend your money. Some you don’t even have to leave the house!

Just remember that while it is amazing to invest time and money into fun experiences such as travel and any other paid experiences, remember that your finances come first. If you’re tight on finances, you can definitely delay doing those activities for a while and wait until you know you’ll be able to do it… there are plenty of free activities that you can do!

Regardless on whether you invest money or not, it’s worth to invest your time into it. Life isn’t always about work…

work..

and work.

It’s also about enjoying the life that you have outside of all that. You’re allowed to have fun, you’re allowed to have hobbies!

Don’t ever see

investing in yourself as a loss

Investing in yourself with time and money is not something that is to be seen as a loss! Investing in yourself gives you a lot of gain that will last a lifetime.

Remember, of all investments you could make in your life, the one that you make to yourself is the one that matters the most.

Make yourself a priority, remember that you are worth the time investing into. Remember that your future self is someone worth investing into. Remember that the person that you are to become is worth investing into.

And honestly, this investment is pretty much one of the only investments in life where you know there’s a 100% return that is so worth it…. a better version of you in the future.

-Lauren😊

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FINANCES

Weekly Finance Management Routine

Health

Essential Habits for Personal Development!

Personal Development

Click here for the blog posts on personal development!! (free investment😉)

Best Practices for Personal Development!

Personal Development Checklist to Grow Yourself!

Weekly Habits for Personal Growth!

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Essential Routines for Personal Growth

Learning

laurenbarri.com (learn all things self-improvement!!)

Relationships, Social, and Fun

Make Your Life More Interesting with these 8 THINGS!

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Ways to Stay Motivated with your Self-Care

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