How to invest your first $1000 in 2025

We've all heard it before “Start investing early and let compounding work its magic!” And it’s true! If you start investing in an ETF like S&P 500 that give a 10% average returns per annum, your $1000 will grow to $2600 in 10 years. But here’s what nobody tells you: Your knowledge can compound faster than the stock market ever will.

Why Investing your first $1000 in Self Education Beats the Stock Market

Before you eagerly start looking for things to invest your first $1,000 in, look at how investing in yourself could unlock a lot more.

Job Upskill and Salary Negotiation: A $100/month raise = $12,000 extra in 10 years

Side Hustles: Content creation/ecommerce skills can generate $500+/month

Financial Education: Financial literacy = Grow your wealth and also preserve it.

How I would spend the $1000?

1. Spend to gain Hands-On experience

Value Investing: I started learning about value investing 9 years ago. I read a lot about value investing and spent around a thousand dollars buying up value stocks. Throughout that process, i learnt a lot about investing, the fees involved and what kind of investor I am.

Content Creation: Similarly, 9 years ago, i started this blog to learn more about content creation. Although its not money that I spent, I had spent a lot of my time on the blog and this free blog taught me SEO, content monetization and audience building.

Ecommerce: A few years ago I had also spent a few hundred dollars to start my own ecommerce business. Today, the recurring income i am getting from my ecommerce business beats ETF returns.

2. Spend to gain Financial Education

Don't be mistaken, in 2025, there are tons of free resources online to level up your financial knowledge. Some of those which I use myself are A Singaporean Stock Investor (ASSI), Investment Moat, The Fifth Person, 1M65 etc.

However, if you want to streamline your learning, have a more curated and organized content to speed up your learning, you can spend some money to attend courses. Of course I would recommend that before you pay for any courses, consume their free content first and try them out. See if they work for you before getting their paid content.

3. Finally Spend to gain wealth

I started this blogpost by saying that investing in your own financial education give way better return than investing. The truth is, most successful person do both but in the right order.

It is only when you equip with the right experience and knowledge can you then invest your money and grow your wealth meaningfully

Use my my referral link (2HNL05JZ) and sign up for Maribank to get Free Money! Find out more about Maribank here and more about the updated referral benefits here.

Thanks for reading and do support me on my referral page.

Check out the CPFcalculator to plan for your retirement now!