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According to Wikipedia, investment is a term with several
closely-related meanings in business management, finance and
economics, related to saving or deferring consumption. Wiki went on
to say that investment is the choice by the individual to risk his
savings with the hope of gain.
According to dictionary.com, investment is
1. the investing of money or capital in order to gain profitable
returns, as interest, income, or appreciation in value.
2. a particular instance or mode of investing.
3. a thing invested in, as a business, a quantity of shares of
stock, etc.
4. something that is invested; sum invested.
5. the act or fact of investing or state of being invested, as with
a garment.
6. a devoting, using, or giving of time, talent, emotional energy,
etc., as for a purpose or to achieve something: His investment in
the project included more time than he cared to remember.
7. Biology. any covering, coating, outer layer, or integument, as
of an animal or vegetable.
8. the act of investing with a quality, attribute, etc.
9. investiture with an office, dignity, or right.
10. a siege or blockade; the surrounding of a place with military
forces or works, as in besieging.
11. Also called investment compound. Metallurgy. a refractory
material applied in a plastic state to a pattern to make a
mold.
12. Archaic. a garment or vestment.
Clearly, there are many definitions of investment. So what exactly
is investment. To some people, investments might be putting money
into the stock market. To some others, the unit trusts, bonds, etc.
To another person, an education is also an investment. Raising a
kid might be an investment to some as well.
To me, investing is the act of sacrificing something in order to
gain something else more worthwhile. It does not necessarily need
to include money. Example: spending time to read self-improvement
books for free from the library is a form of investment; I gain in
getting more insights. Spending the effort to build such a
blog/website is also investing; I gain in being able to gather,
clarify and put together my thoughts.
Indeed, investment is important. To me, the bulk of investments
should be on oneself; the returns are far greater than investing in
any stocks, bonds, etc. Education, reading, learning on the job,
etc, build upon life skills that may likely be used again and again
in the future. This is sort of like a form of compounding; the
database in you may grow in a constant rate, but if each piece of
data gives you some form of returns at a constant rate as well, the
total returns increases in an exponential rate. This is because the
data that you possess continue to give you some sort of returns as
you build up your personal database. Every piece of new data starts
to give you rewards the moment you put it in, together with
previous data that continue to provide the rewards.
Not sure if I explained the idea properly, but in short, invest in
yourself, invest in building up a personal database. This will be
on top of investing time on trading on the stock market (stock
market plays are not called investing, but trading).