They say the hardest part of anything worthwhile is getting started. As someone who has switched careers, picked up and dropped a dozen hobbies, learned several sports and backpacked through northern Spain, let me tell you: getting started with investing is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Why? There are plenty of reasons, but the main two are these: I was ignorant and I was afraid. Before I get to that, I want you to think of investing like running. At first, no one in their right mind wants to go running. The sensation is unpleasant, it can feel endless, and the rewards are delayed, sometimes for decades. Yes, you get in better shape now, but even that takes weeks of getting up and tying your laces. But as you continue with it, you start to improve. You notice you can go a bit further. Your lungs hurt less. And finally, after so much trying, you notice you start to enjoy it. The days where you don’t run, you start to miss it. I compare the two because investing follows the same pattern. At first, it’s hard to get excited, because the potential all seems so removed. Good investing plays the long game and the short game, but it’s hard to get excited about how investing now will pay off for you in retirement. Much like with running, where the true health benefits won’t be seen for years to come. Now, let’s loop back to my ignorance and my terror. I knew very little about investing. Perhaps less than the average person. I was afraid of making an ass of myself. I didn’t want to lose the money I’d set aside to invest. That’s where my ignorance comes in—I assumed my lack of knowledge would leave me in the poor house, so to speak. But what I didn’t realize is that there were ways to ease myself into investing. Much like with running: your first day out doesn’t mean you need to run a marathon. First you tie up the laces, then you go for a jog. The next day you jog a little further, and so on. What I’m going to share next is something I wish I’d known about much sooner. I spent a great deal of time trying to find resources that would let me jog before I ran. Then I found prop trading. In short, prop trading is a way to keep your money in your bank and trade with someone else’s money. I chose Try2BFunded over the others because the cut, 60% for me and 40% for them, and because it let me learn as I was getting situated. Over the course of 5 or 6 weeks, I had to learn the ropes of investing before I could access the $100,000 to trade with. For me, that was perfect. It let me walk before I jogged, and jog before I ran.