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How Growing Your Money is Like Gardening

There’s something so satisfying about planting a seed and watching it bloom into a beautiful plant. The same gratifying experience can be enjoyed when you learn how to grow your money effectively. Use these tips to discover the many ways in which increasing your personal wealth is similar to gardening.

Find a Spot to Plant

Selecting a plot for your garden is about much more than convenience. You want a space where the things you plant will thrive. It needs to have the best soil and sunlight to make your plants grow.

The same goes for your investments. You need to find a place that will help your money grow in a healthy and safe environment. For most people, that’s either a trustworthy financial adviser or an easy-to-use investment platform. This plot provides a solid foundation that helps to protect your investments.

Choose Your Seeds

Next, it’s time to pick out what you’ll be growing. When gardening, this involves a variety of seeds that you’ll strategically place throughout your plot. You need to consider what types of plants will perform best under specific conditions, like your garden’s location and climate.

With investing, you need to carefully pick out stocks that suit your unique needs. Consider your short- and long-term financial goals and how much capital you have available to invest. Based on these conditions, you’ll be able to carefully choose investments that will produce the results you want.

Tend to Your Garden

Image via Flickr by CarbonNYC [in SF!]

Once you’ve picked out what to plant, it’s time to maintain your seeds. As with gardening, investments aren’t really a set-it-and-forget-it venture. You need to regularly assess your progress and make adjustments as needed to optimize your eventual harvest.

Stock trading also requires frequent monitoring. For some people, this task is a bit too time-consuming and they choose to hire a financial adviser to help maintain their financial “garden.” However, you can certainly take care of your own investments if you prefer, especially if you feel experienced enough to make savvy financial decisions on your own. Just be sure to keep track of your stock performance so you can adjust your investments as necessary.

Reap What You Sow

As with gardening, financial investments are never a sure thing. Some years, you may get a “bumper crop” where your returns are especially impressive. Other years, your harvest may not be as exciting. The economic conditions that produce these results are largely out of your hands.

While there’s always some risk involved with investing, you can make smart decisions to mitigate that risk. If you’re careful when you’re choosing which stocks to invest in, you will have more good years than bad years. In addition, a financial adviser can help you to navigate these economic challenges.

Taking the gardening approach to stock trading can help you become a better investor. With this mindset, you’ll see your returns as the fruits of your labor, which ensures that you’ll take time to carefully consider each investment and tend to it to produce the best results.