Let's kill the most expensive myth in personal finance right now: you do not need a fat salary, a finance degree, or a rich uncle to start investing. You need $100 and a decision.

Most women never start because they're waiting. Waiting to earn more, learn more, feel ready. Meanwhile, only 26% of women invest, compared to over 40% of men. That gap isn't about intelligence. It's about who got told they were allowed to play. You're allowed. Start with $100.

Why $100 actually matters

One hundred dollars sounds like nothing in a world that markets investing as a rich-people sport. But here's what it really is: proof of concept. The moment you see your money move on its own — gain a dollar, lose a dollar, pay a dividend — investing stops being theoretical. It becomes muscle memory.

And the math is on your side. $100 a month at a 7% average return — roughly the long-term average of the S&P 500 — turns into $122,709 in 30 years. You contributed $36,000. The rest? The market did the heavy lifting while you slept.

The Rule of 72 makes it concrete: at 7%, your money doubles every ten years. Ten thousand becomes twenty. Twenty becomes forty. Forty becomes eighty. Time, not income, is the real wealth-building lever.

Why waiting is the most expensive thing you can do

Compare two people. Person A invests $200 a month from age 25 to 35, then stops contributing entirely. Person B starts at 35 and invests $200 a month every month until 65. Same return assumption. Same discipline. Different timing.

Person A — who only contributed for ten years — ends up with more money than Person B, who contributed for thirty. That's not a typo. That's compounding. Every year you delay isn't a small loss. It's an exponential one.

Step 1: Open a brokerage account

This takes about 10 minutes and feels almost insultingly easy. Pick one of the big three: Fidelity, Charles Schwab, or Vanguard. All three offer commission-free trades, no account minimums, and the kind of boring reliability you actually want from the place holding your money.

Open a standard taxable brokerage account if you've already maxed retirement accounts, or a Roth IRA if you want tax-free growth and you qualify. Verify your identity. Link your bank. Done.

Step 2: Buy VOO or VTI

Don't pick stocks. Don't research individual companies. Don't buy whatever your coworker is hyping. For your first $100, buy a broad-market index ETF.

VOO tracks the S&P 500 — the 500 largest U.S. companies. VTI tracks the entire U.S. stock market — over 4,000 companies. Either one gives you instant diversification at an expense ratio of 0.03%. That's three cents per year for every $100 invested. Active fund managers charge 1–2% to underperform these exact benchmarks 80–90% of the time. The cheap, boring option is the smart option.

Type the ticker. Hit buy. Congratulations, you own a slice of the American economy.

Want the full playbook, not just the basics?

Invest Like a Bitch walks you through every step — accounts, allocations, automation, and the mindset shifts that actually stick.

Get the Book →

Step 3: Automate the next $100. And the next.

This is the part that turns a one-time deposit into actual wealth. Set a recurring transfer from your bank to your brokerage. $50, $100, $250 — whatever fits your life. Then set a recurring buy order for the same ETF.

This is dollar-cost averaging. You buy more shares when prices drop, fewer when prices rise. You stop trying to time the market — which nobody does well, including the professionals — and you start building a position month after month, on autopilot.

Your savings account, by the way, is losing you money. After inflation, the real return is roughly -1.5% per year. "Safe" is a marketing word. Stagnation is a cost.

Step 4: Ignore the noise

The market will drop. It always does. Headlines will scream. Your portfolio will be red on days when you don't want to look. The single most important thing you can do is nothing.

Don't sell in a panic. Don't check it daily. Don't let CNBC or your group chat turn a long-term plan into a short-term reaction. Down markets are sales, not emergencies. Every recession in modern history has been followed by a new high.

The bottom line

$100 won't make you rich next month. It's not supposed to. It's the first deposit on a future you stop having to ask permission for. Open the account today. Buy the ETF today. Set the automation today. Then go live your life while your money does its job.

The hardest part isn't the math. It's deciding you're done waiting.