Congratulations to those of you who are ready to consider investing as part of actively managing your finances. Now… a common question is “How do I know how much to invest in what assets?”

Truly it can be overwhelming at first. To start, it is important to assess your personal risk tolerance. Are you wanting to take more risk for more potential gain or minimize risk and accept more modest returns?

There are lots of good tools online if you look for them. For example, Charles Schwab provides good information to get started investing on their How To Invest page. Vanguard also has a similar investor page to help you assess your risk tolerance to guide your investments as well as information on asset allocation. Fidelity.com also provides a lot of information for those getting started. There are many sites you can research, and you probably want to look around for more than one. Another example may be the Motley Fool, a funny name to be sure, but a good site.

There are also investment advisory firms like TradeSmith and Stansberry Research.  These last two will try to sell you investing tools or research. You can consider carefully and decide if or what you want to buy. For a few hundred dollars a year you can get good investment advice without a big financial commitment. If you are interested in managing your own investing more actively, some of their tools are worth considering.

Information on sites like these is available to a large extent even if you don’t invest with them. Of course, each website will have contact information for you to contact them and get more information.

It is important to get a feel for how you may want to invest and diversify your money. How aggressive or conservative do you want to be? Always consider that the highest returns generally bring the highest risk, meaning that you could lose money chasing high returns.

I encourage you to pray and take time to assess your comfort with the various risk/reward balance associated with different asset allocation approaches. Do not rush into investing. It is a long-term activity not to be hurried and decided in 30 minutes or even a single day. That said, you will never get there if you don’t get started.

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Remember that all you have belongs to God. Manage your money God’s way. Visit GrowGodsMoney.org .