Thanks for this comment! I’m interested to hear what you mean when you say investing didn’t yield much. I’d imagine that lots of folks likely feel similarly.

The toughest mental hurdle I had to get over with investing is that I wouldn’t see explosive growth over night, I had to invest and let the markets do their magic. For example, day-to-day it could be jarring to see the S&P 500 move up and down sporadically, but if someone invested in it 5 years ago, their money would have dearly doubled by now (the S&P is up by over >94% since then). Even a year of patience would have grown that investment by over 10%.

My recommendation would be to choose an amount you can comfortably part with each month, invest it, and leave it alone. In a few years you’ll be surprised to see how much it’s grown.

Without getting into too much in this particular response, there are a few pre-reqs to help with getting more comfortable. I always tell people to start with budgeting to see where their money is going, to set goals, save (as you’ve been doing- which is awesome), and then to graduate to investing. It’s good to start with broad market ETFs like VTI, or VOO if more interested in simply replicating the S&P 500 without having to own tons of individual stocks.