“What kind of investor am I” is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself. It’s essential to ask yourself before you really get started. How you answer this question will inform the rest of your investing life, which is to say how you answer this question will decide what kind of retirement you want to have. The first thing that should inform your answer is how old you are. This isn’t an agist comment, it’s that young investors are generally encouraged to invest with risk in mind because they have time on their side. The second is to take a truly honest look at your current financial situation. If you’re not maxing out your IRA contributions every year, you need to be. If you’re turning down your employer’s 401k match, you shouldn’t be. The third is to decide how active you want to be. Some people are comfortable letting an advisor, or robo-advisor, do all the work. These people want to kick back, make deposits, and never think about where their money is going. But if you want to be involved with your money—trading yourself, tackling the markets—you need to do one thing first: practice. It’s like the old adage about Carnegie Hall. The best traders got to where they are thanks to practice, practice, practice. The question then becomes “how do I practice investing without losing all of my money?” Another great question—investing is useless if you’re losing your hard earned money due to ignorance. Here’s how I encourage people to practice: use = Try2BFunded, so you’re trading with other people’s money. That way you get to learn on the go without risking your rainy day fund. Out of the many prop traders, I always recommend Try2BFunded for two reasons. The first is simple— Try2BFunded gives you the most money. While other companies offer you 20 or 30% of the profits from your work, Try2BFunded offers a 60% take home. But the real reason for my adoration of Try2BFunded is that it lets you practice on the way to earning $100,000 to trade with. The practice is built into it: as you earn funding, you try different risk levels, different strategies. There are many way to answer “what kind of investor am I?” but there’s one way that will show you your true colors: practice, practice, practice, and get paid for it as you go.