How Much Time Does it Take to Invest?

A common concern that a lot of people have is that they just don’t have enough time in the day to invest, or to learn how to invest.

Part of this comes from not knowing how the stock market works entirely. It’s a lot harder to take the time to learn something that we think is scary or that we don’t fully understand.

Yes, investing is a commitment, but so is having to go back to work for another 15 years after you retire because you failed to learn how to invest and now you’ve run out of money.

Pro tip: Use my retirement calculator to figure out how much money you would have to save each year in order to achieve a retirement account large enough for you to live on during your golden years!

The bad news is the time you learn investing isn’t going somewhere like, improving your golf game. The good news is, learning to invest is actually, pretty, pretty, simple. The better news is that investing will make you rich.

Warren Buffett didn’t start out rich—he got rich because he mastered the skill of evaluating businesses. The Rule #1 strategy teaches you how to do the same. It’s not about gambling in the market; it’s about treating investing like buying a business you’d be proud to own for decades.

There's four things you really have to understand about investing according to quotes by Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. In this video I’ll detail them for you.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/zXsw0sxHD4A

The 4Ms are really the essence of great investing. Everything after that is just icing on the cake. If you can learn those 4 things, you're capable of being a great investor.

If you're short on time, start by focusing on one "M" per week—Meaning, Moat, Management, and Margin of Safety. Even 20 minutes a day reading annual reports or analyzing financials can build momentum fast. Think of it like compounding your knowledge—just like your money, your skills grow over time.

Once you learn how to leverage concepts such as market cap you will be able to more effectively evaluate potential investments.

For example, if you're considering investing in a company like Apple or Costco, knowing their market cap tells you how big the business is, but it’s the growth rate of the Big Five numbers that tells you if the business is truly compounding wealth. Rule #1 investing focuses heavily on these five numbers: ROIC, EPS growth, Sales growth, Equity growth, and Free Cash Flow growth.

Another of the 4Ms will help you determine if you can buy a company safely to make a 15% return over a 10-year period. Which concept are we talking about? Margin of safety, of course - which us RULERS love to use because we always do a lot of research into businesses before buying into them. that way, we're always confident in purchasing.

After all, Rule #1 is "Don't lose money!"

Just like investing, learning how to invest has great returns in that once you’ve done everything a few times it becomes a habit. The knowledge of investing is something that will pay off for the rest of your life. How much time are you willing to commit in a weekly basis in order to learn how to invest?

Learn to invest with certainty by buying the right business at the right time by downloading my 4Ms report.

In it you'll learn:

• Four topics that will guide you to the perfect investment.

• The 10-10 Rule - something to remember every time you buy a business.

• The Big Five numbers that determine if a business is a good investment.

As you're researching potential businesses in which to invest, you might like to start crunching some numbers with my investment calculators, too!

Need a real tangible place to start? Consider signing up for our Investing Workshop where I will have one of my certified coaches (who was once a student just like you) walk you through a real-world company analysis using the 4Ms. You'll see exactly how much time it takes—and how quickly you can build confidence. We can't wait to work alongside you!

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**Editors Note: Last Updated on April 2, 2025**