So much of financial success involves good habits practiced over long periods of time.

Yes, you can still have a positive impact on your financial future if you’re starting late in life — but if you’re 59 years old and just beginning to think about financial freedom, you have a lot of work to do.

But if you’re 19, you have an extra forty years to set yourself up for financial success. This extra time makes a ginormous difference!

A lot of this is due to the magic of compounding. Over the short term, your investment returns don’t help a whole bunch. But over the long term? Over decades? Wow! Compounding can help you create a truly impressive wealth snowball.

I once received email from a reader named Anders who testified the power of compounding:

I used to save money in funds without knowing more than it gave a better interest than ordinary savings accounts. Then a few years ago I came across a book that explained compound interest and showed graphs of how it works. I was blown away by the idea!

I think, for me, that was the biggest impact on my way of thinking about savings and it got me more interested in the stock market too. So in my opinion, the things people who don’t know too much about savings/investing need to hear is about how compound interest works and how the stock market works.

We’ll leave “how the stock market works” for another day. (If you want to know more right now, check out my articles on stock market returns and how to invest.) Today I want to look at why some folks consider compounding to be the most powerful force in the universe.

The Power of Compounding

On its surface, compounding is innocuous — even boring. How much does it matter if you start saving now? Will it really affect what you can spend in the future?

To illustrate the power of compounding, I spent far too much time playing with spreadsheets. (Seriously. Kim managed to get like three major projects done in the time it took me to generate the following numbers and graphs. But I had more fun.)

When I told readers that January would be “back to basics” month at Get Rich Slowly, the number-one request I received was to write about how to invest.

Rather than scatter investing info throughout the month, I decided to collect the essentials into one mammoth article. Here it is: all you need to know about how to invest — even if you’re a beginner.

In writing this article, I tried not to bog it down with jargon and definitions. (I’m sure I let some of that slip through the cracks, though. I apologize.) Nor did I dive deep. Instead, I aimed to share the basic info you need to get started with investing.

What follows are eight simple rules for how to invest. And in the end, I’ll show you how to put these rules into practice. First, let’s dispel some popular misconceptions.

Investing isn’t Gambling — and It isn’t Magic either
Investing scares many people. The subject seems complicated and mysterious, almost magical. Or maybe it seems like gambling. When the average person meets with his financial adviser, it’s often easiest to sit still, smile, and nod.

One of the problems is that the investing world is filled with jargon. What are commodities? What’s alpha? An expense ratio? How do bonds differ from stocks? And sometimes, familiar terms – such as risk – mean something altogether different on Wall Street than they do on Main Street.

Plus, we’re bombarded by conflicting opinions. Everywhere you look, there’s a financial expert who’s convinced she’s right. There’s a never-ending flood of opinions about how to invest, and many of them are contradictory. One guru says to buy real estate, another says to buy gold. Your cousin got rich with Bitcoin. One pundit argues that the stock market is headed for record highs, while her partner says we’re due for a “correction”. Who should you believe?

Perhaps the biggest problem is complexity – or perceived complexity. To survive and seem useful, the financial services industry has created an aura of mystery around investing, and then offered itself as a light in the darkness. (How convenient!) As amateurs, it’s easy to buy into the idea that we need somebody to lead us through the jungle of finance.

Here’s the truth: Investing doesn’t have to be difficult. Investing is not gambling, and it’s not magic.

You are perfectly capable of learning how to invest. In fact, it’s likely that — even if you know nothing right now — you can earn better investment returns than 80% of the population without any scammy tricks or expensive tips sheets.

Today, I want to convince you that if you keep things simple, you can do your own investing and receive above-average returns – all with a minimum of work and worry. Sound good? Great! Let’s learn how to invest.