There is no shortage of advice telling women to invest. Open a brokerage account. Buy stocks. Try Treasury Bills. Put your money in a mutual fund. Make your money work for you. But before any of that comes the question many women are quietly asking: Am I actually ready to start investing?
Maybe you are earning regularly but still trying to build your savings. Maybe you have some money set aside but are afraid of losing it. Or perhaps you have been watching investment videos for months and still do not understand what you are supposed to buy.
For Oluchukwu Chiadika, founder of Your Personal Finance Girl, the conversation around investing starts with understanding your money, not simply putting it somewhere and hoping it grows.
Chiadika has spent years making personal finance more accessible to young Nigerians. YPFG began as a passion project focused on financial education and has grown into a platform focused on helping people make better financial decisions.
She learned the hard way
In a 2025 interview with PiggyVest, Chiadika revealed that she made her first major investment mistake in 2015, when she put her life savings into an investment and lost everything.
The experience forced her to start again and spend years learning about personal finance before launching YPFG.
When she eventually began educating others, she started with the basics: budgeting, saving and understanding what to do with your income.
Her story complicates the idea that someone has to be a perfect investor before they can begin learning about money.
So, when are you ready?
There is no single income level or magic amount that automatically makes someone ready to invest. What matters first is whether you understand your financial position well enough to make an informed decision.
To Chiadika, understanding the basics of earning, spending, saving and investing is important. Her approach to financial education has focused on helping people take greater ownership of their money and make decisions with more confidence.
That means investing does not necessarily have to be the first financial step. If you do not know how much you earn, where your money goes each month or how much you need for your immediate obligations, adding an investment to the mix may not solve the underlying problem.
The first step may simply be understanding your money better.
But saving alone is not the whole story
Chiadika’s also pushes against the idea that saving should be the end goal. Inflation can reduce the purchasing power of money over time, which is why she has increasingly focused on helping people understand investing and long-term wealth building.
This does not mean every woman should rush into the first investment opportunity she sees. It means that once the basics are in place, the question can change from “Should I invest?” to “What am I investing for, and do I understand what I am putting my money into?”
You don’t have to understand everything before you start learning. One of the biggest barriers to investing is the feeling that everyone else already understands it.
But Chiadika’s own journey shows that financial confidence is built through learning. Not knowing is not necessarily a reason to stay away from investing. It can be a reason to learn before you commit your money.
The real question may be different
Perhaps being “ready to invest” is not about having a particular salary, a certain age or a large amount of money. Perhaps it is about being ready to understand your money, accept that investments carry different levels of risk, learn what you are buying and make decisions based on your own financial goals rather than social pressure.
So if you have been wondering whether you are ready to invest, the answer may not be a simple yes or no.
Start with better questions: Do I understand my current finances? What am I investing for? Can I afford to leave this money invested? Do I understand the investment I am considering?
Am I making this decision because it fits my financial goals, or because everyone online seems to be doing it? You do not need to know everything before you begin. But you should know enough to understand what you are doing with your money and why.
ASK HER TAKEAWAY
- Know your money first. Understand what comes in, what goes out and what you are trying to achieve.
- Saving and investing serve different purposes. Building savings is important, but long-term wealth building may require learning about investments too.
- Don’t invest because you feel left behind. Understand what you are buying before putting your money into it.
- Learning is part of being ready. You can start by learning the basics before making your first investment.
- Your goal matters. Investing should connect to what you actually want your money to help you achieve.
