 Welcome back to the Independent Investor channel and welcome to 2023. It's one of the most common questions that I get in investing, having a social media presence now for about six years. What to invest in? Ryan, what do I invest in? What stock do I invest in? Ryan, is this a good stock? And it's all aimed toward what people should invest in. My focus is renewed in that I think we need to be focusing on how we invest in the stock market and not necessarily what to invest in. I think if we focus in on the how to invest in the market, the what to invest in will take care of itself. I always contend that people's psyche and their approach and perspective toward financial markets needs to be at the highest level of fitness before they enter into an investment program for themselves. Now make no mistake, guys, I am the independent investor. I invest for myself, for my family, every decision that I make is mine and mine alone. I do not seek out the services of a financial institution because I just think that the fees over time are too insurmountable to ignore. And I've found enormous success by investing on my own and making strategic decisions with an idea of reducing fees and reducing your tax obligation over time. It's one of the most prudent moves that you can make. There's a lot of decisions that people will make over the course of their lifetime. Some will be good, some will be bad. But in this video, I'm gonna talk about the top three things that anybody can do. Anybody can do it on their own accord. Anybody can do it if they want to. Fit it into the New Year's resolution category if that's what you want to do. But when we're talking about personal finance and fitness, it really does start with you. And these are three things that anybody can do. They can deploy in their personal application and understand a little bit more about the how to invest in the stock market rather than always wondering what to invest in in the stock market. This is key. The first thing I wanna introduce you guys to, if you're new to the stock market, new to investing, a lot of people don't invest because they're scared of what is to come. They make up in their mind what it is that they've been told or what they've heard on the news that everything is volatile. We're entering into a recession. And somehow I think that curbs people's enthusiasm to invest. What you need to do is you need to define your own personal risk tolerance to the market. Your own personal risk tolerance is going to let you know those investments that you can enter into and be calm, cool, and collected as you invest over the long term. See the game is to identify what you can engage in on a plan if you wanted to buy the broader indexes, if you wanted to go with exchange traded funds. And the idea is that you buy a lot of diversified assets across the markets, whether at Bay here in the United States and our domestic markets or even globally, those assets that you can enter into and you can own hundreds and in most cases thousands of equities. Now stocks go up and down every single day but your tolerance is gonna be that much more defined if you can give yourself a fighting chance by defining your own tolerance to volatile markets. How would you react if your net worth, let's say 100,000 or 10,000 depending on where you are in your investing evolution chops 20% and you're now down. How would you feel about it? Would you be angry? Would you lose sleep over it? The idea is to enter into those defensive, passive, diversified, globally diversified if you can. I'm more of a domestic investor which in my portfolio reviews, you can see that these themes on how to invest are rich within my portfolio application and they apply to the masses. There's nothing special about what I do. There's a lot of people out there that contend that they have the answer on what to invest in and very few people focus on what it is that I feel like people should be focused on more often than not and that is how to invest in the stock market and your risk tolerance, it runs the chance of being the most inaccurate when you start investing. So keep that in mind. People have just gone through a very, very difficult market in 2022, the fourth worst in history. So it's times like these where you want to evaluate your plan that you put in place for yourself and say, okay, it was a little uncomfortable at times but I'm good with it. I'm a survivor, I can be tough and a lot of people do need to toughen up and they really do need to be fair with their expectations and understanding that anybody can be tolerant to market fluctuations if the market goes up every day. That's easy, everybody would invest. You wouldn't hear naysayers out there talking about how terrible the stock market is and how nobody should invest right now because we have a looming recession but if you truly stay long on your plan and you have a very strategic personal goal as to why you invest in the market, it will make sense and it will help you define your risk tolerance over time. Number two in 2023 that I think is really, it's really difficult to explain to people when I say DCA. A lot of people don't understand what that means but dollar cost averaging is one of the most underappreciated strategies in personal application. Now it does require and is much more helpful if you identify a surplus in your budget and that way that surplus can be put to work to pay you first. This idea that you're overwhelmed with bills and overwhelmed with house payments and overwhelmed with car payments and overwhelmed every single month which what seems to be an unexpected expenditure every single month. You get a little bit of a head and oh whoa is me, life does a funny thing and throws a curveball at me that I can't hit, unexpected expenditure. The idea is to identify in your budget month to month the surplus dollars that can be put to work and not thought about. I've deployed a dollar cost average strategy my entire life and I look to my net worth and I attribute the discipline and the how I invest in the stock market much more to where I am currently in my life and my financial status to what it I invested in and the what stock I bought at some point in the history. It had much more to do with the discipline and constantly infusing financial markets with funding through a dollar cost average schedule. For the new investor out there that doesn't understand DCA, it's a very simple concept of taking whatever money you can afford. I started with $25 personally and I charge you with doing that. If you are currently not funding the market and you are at $0 flowing into the market every single month or every single week or whatever you could afford, my friends you are missing out and the third reason is really gonna hit home for you in understanding that by devoting $0 to the stock market you are letting time slip away in contributing to your financial future and allowing the effects of compounding interest to take hold in your personal finance portfolio. It is super important to adhere to this, learn up on it, read some books, it'll cost you nothing. Don't do it because I tell you to do it. Don't do it because I tell you that it's a good idea. Validate it for yourself. Everything that I talk about is worth validating on your own. I have shifted to fundamental investing and those key concepts that are gonna help the masses out there. I contend that 100% of people who hear the message and want to deploy can in fact deploy as opposed to having a few stocks out there that might go up for a while, people invest in it, they're happy for a while, then they do a funny thing and they go down and people are angry. And whether or not those single stocks actually fit into those personal applications is beyond me. But themes on how to invest on the market absolutely fit into everybody's regime. It is super important for retail investors specifically to adhere to these tried and true fundamentals of investing and start to incorporate investing as a lifestyle change and there's no better time than in 2023 to do just that. Now the third and final thing that I want to bring to your attention relates to the dollar cost average. In 2023, the Roth IRA contributions limits were raised to $6,500. For you guys that have never started a Roth IRA or for you guys that do have a Roth IRA, it is absolutely critical for you to work toward that max funding. If you do that, we're talking about $500 every single month for a lot of people, that is a lot. If you split that in half, you're talking about $250. If you talk about $125 every two weeks, you're talking about realizing 50% of your benefit every single year. Now the caveat is the more years you let go by and allow those benefits that are yours and yours alone to be surrendered to the government, you can't get those years back, okay? Now you can contribute in your catch up funds when you're 50 and older, but why would you wait until you're 50 to start realizing the benefits of the Roth IRA? So those contributions flow in there, but the third aspect of how you invest in the stock market is to ensure that the maximum amount of dollars that you have are put to a tax protected program. That wealth has a chance to grow over time tax protected. And when you reach 59 and a half, the eligible contributions and capital gains that are made on that money can be removed from that and help fund your retirement tax free. It is the best kept secret in the investing world. I feel like there's a lot of people who are on the sideline and don't invest at all. And that $25 a month could start to be that chip away of that benefit that you have if you just opt to open an individual Roth IRA account for your retirement, for you as an individual or you as a married couple, you and your spouse and you and your family to start to tax protect money and start to build generational wealth for you and your family. You notice a difference here. We talk about how to invest in the stock market. And when I talk about how to invest in the stock market, I put the personal charge to you. It's totally up to you. It's the person that you see in the mirror to make the changes necessary to engage in answering these questions for yourself in how you're invest in the stock market as opposed to trying to seek out information on what to invest in. Big, big fundamental difference. If you guys enjoy the information, please I would invite you to subscribe to the Independent Investor Channel. If you have any comments, please leave them at the bottom of the video, hit the notification bell and the like video as it helps me gain traction on YouTube and bring more people into understanding how you invest in the stock market in 2023. Guys, thank you so much for tuning into the message and good luck in your investment future.