Why it is Important to Have Patience With Long Term Investing

Immediate gratification is something that most people crave, but it isn’t readily available. This is especially true when it comes to investing.

Why is patience so necessary where investing is concerned? Let’s just consider the underlying structure to most investing plans to get our answer. First of all, no one who wants to succeed in their plans for investing will put all of their proverbial “eggs in one basket,” and this means that they are going to have a variety of vehicles that will develop value and build wealth over the short, mid, and long term.

If we accept that there are periods of time assigned to each sort of investing vehicle, we can immediately see why patience is so important. If we expect a long term asset to enhance the value of the portfolio quickly, it may allow us to make a bad decision with a mid or short term investment. For example, let’s say we look at a long term asset like silver bullion and we don’t let it increase in value to the level we have planned, we are going to diminish this asset’s ability to offset risk quite measurable.

Generally, investing on any level is going to demand patience, but it tends to be the long term options where people become impatient. This leads to another flawed decision making process, and this when people begin selling the vehicles they initially purchased for their long term investing goals, as well.

One of the worst choices of this kind involves bonds, which require a preset term in order to reach their full value, and to continue accumulating interest. When using bonds for long term investing purposes, it is best to just buy them and simply forget about them as any sort of capital. When we ignore this basic investing advice, and cash in a bond ahead of maturity, we are actually upsetting all of the plans for successful investing.