Your Investing Checklist: Ready for Lifelong Wealth Building?

Over half of investors feel overwhelmed by too many options. Two thirds regard impulsive decisions when investing, four in ten admit they lose sleep over market uncertainty.And almost half rely on friends or family for financial advice. I don't know about you, but I'm not relying on my friends and family because that leads to confusion. Listen to this.Over half of Americans feel financially frozen, unsure what to do next, and more than half wish they had clear, simple investing plans to follow.Only 1 in 3 investors feel confident about their long term Strategy and over 60% of investors want step by step guidance rather than more information. What amazing statistics. It leads us to our question for today. Got this question in our email today.Ralph, I feel overwhelmed by all the advice on investing. Could you just give me a simple checklist to follow for the long haul? Well, thank you for the question.I thought I'd been doing that for the last 30 days, but I'm just being funny. We spent a whole month on investing. Now let's wrap it up with a simple practical checklist to guide you for lifelong wealth building.Get ready for my eight point practical checklist. That's what I'm going to cover on today's show.

This is Financially Confident Christian, your daily dose of gospel, grounded insight and faith driven tips to to help you break the cycle of financial shame with confidence.

Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Ralph and today we're wrapping up our month long series on investing.I'm going to talk about a simple practical checklist for the long haul because so many people tell me, Ralph, I feel overwhelmed by all the advice. So if you feel that way, let me tell you right now, you're in good company. A lot of us feel that way.And the truth is most investors don't need more information. There's plenty of information out there.There's all kinds of websites and there's these financial gurus all over TikTok and YouTube giving you all kinds of information. Honestly, I think it's information overload. What people really need is clarity and they need a trusted guy.And that's why today I'm going to walk you through a checklist that I've built to help you build confidence, to help you take consistent action and to keep your investing journey faith driven. And I'll tell you what, I'm going to tell you about a story. I had a client who was paralyzed by this information overload.They actually would call me, they'd say rap. I listened to another investment seminar. I watched this YouTube video. Ralph, I don't know what to do.They came in and we sat down, we had a meeting and I broke it down into a five point checklist. Now I've grown that a little bit. Today I'm actually going to give you an eight point checklist.But when I was able to share that with the client, he finally felt free to take steady action without second guessing himself. And I love this quote from Jim Rohn. Jim said this. He said, success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practice every single day. I love it.I love what he says here. It's nothing more than a few simple disciplines practice every day. So. All right, you ready? Here's my eight point checklist. You ready for this?Here we go. Number one, you got to know your why. As you started this investment series, we talked about understanding why you were doing this.It is absolutely crucial that you understand why, why you're investing, what are your goals, what are your fears. And then that helps you understand if you're going to get to where you want to get to.Because if you don't have a goal, you're not going to know when you got there. So, number one, start with knowing where your why is. Number two, start small, but start now. A lot of people are fearful.They like Ralph, I don't have any money to get started. You have $25, you can get started. It starts like that. But don't put it off to when you're ready.Because if you put it off till you're ready, you be 70 years old and say, I wish I had invested. So number two, start small and start now. Number three, it's all part of the why. Match your risk to comfort and your timeline.We've talked about that in the last 30 days. Understand what your tolerance is to risk. Maybe you're one of these people that's willing to bet at all. Maybe you're very conservative.You got to understand that. Understand what's comfortable for you. Because, listen, I'm not at all advising you to do something that you're not comfortable with.And at the same time, we've talked about this early in the series. Understand your timelines. If you're 20 years old, your investment timeline is a heck of a lot different than somebody who's in their 60s.So understand that. So number three, match your risk to your comfort and your timeline. Number four, Abby's going to laugh when I say this.We talked about this many times. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. This is the time to diversify and diversify wisely. So that's number Four, diversify wisely.Number five, automate and stay consistent. If you haven't heard anything else I've talked about in the last 30 days, I've talked and talked and talked about being consistent.It's that consistency. And the best way I think you can get that consistency is automate this. Make it something that's automatic.We talked about setting it up so that when you get your paycheck or when you're. You're. Whatever, whatever works for you so that it just automatically happens each time. So that's number five. Automate and stay consistent.Number six, we'll talk about reviewing here, but don't obsess about it. Actually got an email the other day. They said, ralph, I'm scared to death about my investments. Well, that's a problem. Do you know your.Why go through that checklist? Review it, but don't obsess about it. Now, this isn't the time to wait till the end of the year and say, hey, what happened last year?We talked about looking at this monthly, we're looking at this quarterly. It is a good thing to review it. But don't obsess about it. Because if you obsess about it, what happens? Start to build that emotion.We talked about that. When that emotion starts, guess what happens? Then you start making bad decisions.I know for me, when I make decisions out of emotions, most of the time they turn out to be bad decisions. So number six, review, but don't obsess. Number seven.Now, this has absolutely nothing to do with investing, but I truly believe this is the secret sauce to it. You're ready for number seven, Give generously. You're thinking, wait a minute, Ralph, you're telling me to invest.You're telling me to go make money for myself. Correct. But why are you doing it? Bake that into the cake. Give generously. Because what did the scripture tell us?When we give generously, we're rewarded for that. So number seven is give generously. And number eight, big takeaway. Invest with eternity in mind.Don't just think about what's going to happen next week or next month or next year. Think about the impact that this is going to have for eternity. And let's get right into our Bible verse today.Our Bible verse comes from First Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 2. Now, it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.Now, you might be thinking, that's an interesting verse to pick today, Ralph. What does that have to do with investing? Well, here's. It has everything to do with investing. If you think about it, we've been given a trust.The reason I do this show is all about financial stewardship. Well, Christ has given us a trust. He's given us these resources. Investing is a way to be a financially confident steward of those things.And it's right here in the scripture. We've got to prove faithful. Well, faithfulness is being consistent. Faithfulness is deciding to choose wisely. All those things.Now let's go back through our eight point checklist again because I want to make sure we don't miss any of that. Let's get right to number one. So number one, again, know your why. Number two, start small, but start now.Number three, match risk to comfort and look at that timeline. Number four, diversify wisely. Number five, automate and stay consistent. Number six, review, but again, don't obsess about it.Number seven, give generously. And number eight, the top of the cake, where the candle goes. Invest with eternity in mind.How about we pray together now, Lord, as we wrap up this 30 day investment series, Truth is, we feel a little overwhelmed sometimes we have fear about things we don't understand, Lord. So right now we ask you to just help us be faithful with the resources you've given us. Help us to be wise in those things.Help us to be faithful in those things, Lord. And as we consider these things, give us wisdom. Help us to create this personal checklist that honors you, Lord. Help us to be consistent.Help us to stick with this over the long haul and think about eternity. And Lord, we ask this in confidence in the name of Jesus. Amen. All right, you ready for your action item?I don't expect you to do all eight items, but I want you to write your own personal investing checklist. Pick three to five points for the long haul. Keep it simple, keep it faith driven and let that be your compass when things feel overwhelming.Because guess what, things will become overwhelming at times. And then just follow with consistency, trusting God, step by step.Well, listen, as we end this series, I just want to thank you for joining me this month as we walk through investing together. You might have thought the beginning, I had no idea about investing. Well, now you have confidence.And if you've missed any of our episodes, you can go back and listen to all of them. Go right to our website, that's financially confidentChristian.com and you can get all of our past episodes.And I hope you're leaving after this with more clarity, more confidence and today a checklist to help you keep consistent. Because remember this wealth isn't just built for today, it's entrusted for eternity. Now, you ready for some excitement?Tomorrow we're going to launch a brand new series. Christmas is coming. Yes. It's only two months away or only a month and a half away kind of set.So we're going to start off with a big question for next month and that is will you enjoy the holiday season or end up buried in debt? Man, I've gotten a ton of questions with this. So next month starting tomorrow, we're going to tackle that in our new series, Holiday Survival.Enjoy the season without the debt. So I encourage you to check that out. We start that tomorrow. Encourage your friends to join us as well.And now I want to tell you, go out there today and be a financially confident Christian. I have confidence in you. Have confidence in yourself. Stay financially savvy. God bless you.And I'll see you tomorrow on our new series about enjoying the season without going into debt.