Scared of the stock market? Maybe you’re just making excuses

We’ve all heard the old saw that it takes money to make money. The bigger problem may be that a lot of people who are making money aren’t taking any of it and investing it.
A Bankrate.com study released Thursday showed that more than half of all Americans are avoiding making any investments in the stock market, and more than half of those non-participants blamed their situation on a lack of money.
While 53% of the study group cited a lack of money as their reason for avoiding the market, that cut was even higher (58%) for people aged 65 and up, entering retirement and, theoretically, desperate for growth as they enter a period where their income is shrinking.
Moreover, it wasn’t just millennials — the newest investors — complaining about a lack of dough; 46% of survey respondents making more than $75,000 per year were saying things were too tight to invest.
Meanwhile, for years studies have shown that plenty of Americans are so pessimistic about their prospects that they believe the lottery is their best chance of accumulating a retirement nest egg of several hundred thousand dollars. The average household in the United States reportedly spends nearly $550 per year on lottery tickets, even though research from the Employee Benefit Research Institute showed that more than a quarter of Americans have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
You don’t need to be a market wizard to invest in the market. Whether it’s using an index fund – because you know you want to participate in the market, even if you don’t know much about how to do it – or buying a broad mutual fund and having a money manager pick stocks, a lack of knowledge shouldn’t stop a consumer from investing any more than a lack of knowledge about cooking should stop someone from eating.