Is your list of things you wish you could do, but can't afford to do, growing longer? Many people understand the value of investing, and the importance of investing in order to secure their futures, but they don't have much available money that can be used for investing. These people might believe that they are not able to start investing and instead, continue to struggle with the daily living expenses and no plan for their financial future.



There are actually numerous ways that people who don't necessarily have a lot of cash available can begin investing, and every penny saved can help over the longer term. The only proven way to improve your financial situation is to reduce your expenses and increase your income, while saving for the future.

7 Ways to Invest Even if You're Broke

1. Save all of your change. Use cash to make as many purchases as possible, rather than writing a check or swiping your debit card, and put the change into a bucket at home each day. At the end of every month or two, deposit the change into a high interest savings account and watch it grow! If you've never actually saved your change before, you will be quite surprised at how fast change can accumulate. If you saved $25 in change each month, you'd have $300 at the end of the year- and more if you save it in a high interest savings account!

2. Enroll in a direct stock purchase plan that allows you to start investing with as little as $25. Direct stock purchase plans allow investors to purchase fractions of stocks based on the dollar amount you invest.

3. Reinvest your dividends to increase the number of shares of stock you own. This can help result in higher income levels in later years, and while you would probably enjoy receiving those mini-dividend checks now, it's better to reinvest them so they can grow into larger checks in a few years!

4. Enroll in your company's 401K plan, if offered. Some companies even provide a matching contribution- where they match a percentage or all of your deposits. If you have this available to you and you aren't taking advantage of it, you're throwing away free money. You may miss the $15 you have automatically deducted from your pay and put into your 401K each week at first, but after a few weeks you won't even notice it's gone and it will be going to a far greater cause than using it to buy lunch at your favorite fast food joint!

5. Join an investment club, and pool your money with the members of the club to help build a more comprehensive portfolio for small investments. When you invest on your own with small amounts of money, it can be difficult to build a diverse portfolio. By pooling your money with a group of like-minded people, you can build a diverse and comprehensive portfolio that will perform much better financially.

6. Take advantage of compound interest and start investing as early as possible. If you invest $2,000 at the age of 25, you will actually end up with more at retirement than a 30 year old who invests $5,000 on the same date!

7. If you receive money from an unexpected source, or you get a tax refund, you should consider it money you didn't get and immediately invest it instead of spending it. When you invest the money, you get a deduction on your taxes, also.