College Students Should Start Investing Their Savings

Image source

Some college students are with the opinion that money is a topic best reserved for after graduation. Many feel that they are too young for money, let alone investment. That would be fine if financial literacy or at least courses somehow related to managing your funds is taught in school. Since they are not, many would likely find it difficult to manage their finances or even overwhelmed with it once they start earning their first pay cheque.

While this may not be true for many college students, I have found this particularly true which has inspired me to write this particular post. I understand that talking about financial literacy, let alone growing your savings can be rather daunting. Thus, instead of writing a long comprehensive post, this post will serve mainly as an introduction to different types of ways where if you are a college student with limited income can grow your finances.

Why Bother?

To give the readers a little bit of a background, I will be speaking from a Malaysian perspective. The methods mentioned here are readily available in the states with many many more options, but we in Malaysia have a rather limited but still relatively adequate list of methods to grow one's savings.

This is important because the money that you own devalues every year, especially if you leave it to sit in the bank. As the years go by, the money in your account will likely not be able to keep up with inflation. Thus, instead of leaving the money sitting around in the bank, why not make the money work for you?

Image source

You may not see the benefits...yet. But trust me, once you graduate, having a nice sum of money to start off will definitely be helpful. I remember only getting my pay after 3 months of working due to the inefficiencies of my company. Thus, I had to live off my savings for the first three months. If you do end up in a similar situation, you will be thankful that you have grown your money since your college days for this particular purpose. Plus, the extra cash would definitely come in handy if you want to buy a car or to put down the first payment for your apartment's rent.

Traditional, Hassle Free Methods

I deemed this list of methods to be traditional because they have been around for quite awhile now. The first one of course is mutual funds. Head to any bank or investment firm and I am sure they would have a list of mutual funds that you could purchase. For a fee as low as 2%, you can have an experienced fund manager manage your funds for you, giving you a return as much as 10% a year. This method is also hassle free because all you have to do is transfer over the money and leave it to the fund manager to trade it for you. If this method interests you, do make sure you purchase your product from reputable banks or financial firms.

A second method requires a little bit more work, but in recent years, peer to peer lending has started in Malaysia. How it works is that you can lend as little as a hundred Ringgit with interests ranging from seven to ten percent. While this may sound dodgy, these companies are audited by the government so it definitely beats giving your money away to someone in a dark street alley, not that I have tried it before.

Image source

If those methods are not for you, perhaps you could start buying up stocks of companies that are reputable. You know, the companies where if they were to close down, Malaysia would be in trouble. Stocks such as Airasia or Sunway just to name a few. Better yet, go for stocks that pay a dividend and in true blue cryptocurrency fashion, HODL those stocks for the long term while still get paid a small sum every year or every quarterly.

Cryptocurrency

Now this is going to be a long long list, there are many many coins out there that do give out passive income. Great examples consist of Neo and Kucoin shares just to name a few. Some of these coins and tokens requires some setting up. Some of these cryptocurrencies may require a large sum of investment in order for any passive income to be generated.

That being said, with limited finances as a college student, perhaps another alternative would be to just buy up certain great projects and coins and just hold them. By the time you've graduated college, I am sure that you have made quite a tidy sum. A few great coins that I would recommend would be Eos, Ethereum, Fusion and of course Bitcoin. There are also a long list of other more risky but potentially great coins (I'm looking at you Zebe & Ziliqa).

Image source

And of course.... Need I mention Steem?

The Point of All This

I am by no means a financial adviser. Everything I have said here are things that I have studied or at least have some personal experience in. I am of course not asking you to invest in everything I have pointed out here. I feel that as students, instead of focusing on the worldview coined by your books, starting to invest your savings in any of your chosen methods above would open up a completely different worldview to you.

It won't be long before you start to read up more, learn more to equip yourself with the knowledge necessary to grow your finances. It is through growing your money that you learn and equip yourself with knowledge that is potentially more important than the content learnt in your lectures. That's because no matter what courses you do, no matter what job you will be involved in, money is the only constant that we will all be exposed to. It is a shame that students are not taught more about how to handle it.

Thus, instead of waiting for graduation, why not start investing today?

---