Investing some time... and time is money... so investing some money.

I'm not bad with money. I seem to have enough to live at all times, and I have a bit put away for emergencies. I've started a saving account for my son so he can have some money when he heads out into the world. I pay off my credit card every month and only spend too much money on cute denim jackets when I can think of a good excuse to: like someone at work annoying me that day, or it being the anniversary month of the first time I texted my husband or something like that.

I don't really understand stocks or investing or any of that, but it seems like maybe it's time to try. I'm constantly seeing these articles about being a "money genius" or "making your money work for you" or "not buying the targetted ad tee-shirt that says 'spooky bitch' on it" and it finally came to me that maybe it's time I learned a bit more about money aside from paying my bills, doing my taxes, and savings accounts. If there's one thing I've learned from Wu-Tang Clan, it's that Cash happens to Rule Everything Around Me, so I better learn to rule it back... or whatever.

So I did what anyone doing thorough research does, and I pulled up google. The time was 10:26pm.

I decided the first thing I should look into was just literally... what are stocks. I don't get it. For some reason I have heard the word "NASDAQ" a few times, but until now I was pretty sure that was a creature in Harry Potter.

I found an article literally called Stock Investing for Dummies and basically I need to find a company that I think is going to take the hell off and make a bunch of money but hasn't yet. So: I buy their stock when it's cheap, wait for them to make it big, and then I can cash out and sell my stocks off when they're worth a lot because they're rich or something. So... from this... I am thinking I buy stock in the company making those "spooky bitch" tee shirts. Okay, we move on.

I then came to this wonderful website called Investopedia, which taught me that unfortunately the DOW and NASDAQ are just acronyms for the measures of certain big important stocks' movement on the market. It was a lot of math talk and averages and whatnot. It was 10:41 at this point and I was starting to wonder if I was going to get anywhere on this journey because I skipped math in high school to rehearse for musical theatre.

At 10:44 I was on another Investopedia article about trading stocks and I was even more lost. I was supposed to be watching the market and "moving fast" and "sticking to the plan" and a whole bunch of other stuff that was over my head.

At 10:46 I realized that this subject matter required me to get in the right headspace. I left my laptop on my chair and decided to make myself a tall glass of chocolate milk, like a civilized adult.

I returned to my computer at 10:53 and my attitude had changed a bit.

And according to some dude named Ramit, I do. He even said that if I don't start automatically investing now I will lose money and that I'm not getting any younger. I don't usually take kindly to men telling me what to do, and I especially don't enjoy comments on my age, so this especially pissed me off. However, there was hope in the whole "automatic investment" thing. Apparently I can set up automatic investments into some type of investment account. Maybe this getting rich thing wouldn't take so much of my time and attention. Maybe it could take up a man's time and attention and then I could tell him he's not getting any younger.

at 11:02pm I decided to take a new path

Much to my surprise, it turns out I do have a couple of investments going for me in terms of retirement and my savings accounts "making my money working for me" and whatnot, so that was cool.

And then, I saw this:

Which was still complete gibberish at 11:07.

I'll call my parents tomorrow and ask how they learned how to invest their money. Then I'll call some dude who handles investment and make him spend time and attention on trying to teach me to understand finance. I'll remind him he isn't getting any younger.

It's 11:10pm, my bills are paid, and I'm not broke. The stock market will have to wait.