“Don’t waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy.” — Roy T. Bennett
A 2019 study found that 70 percent of American investors had experienced some form of regret regarding their investing strategy [1]. From that same study, 35 percent of investors also said they wished they had invested more.
So that you don't have any regrets later on like these investors, you'll set up all the best investing accounts you'll need on this page.
Think of investment accounts like checking or savings accounts. They are not investments that you own but a type of account that you can put investments in. Like checking and savings accounts, there are choices of where to open your investment accounts. To save you some future heartache, this guide walks you through the best ones the U.S. has to offer.
The last sentence should have clued you in. If you're not an American resident or under 18, you might not be able to follow all the steps as we advance.
Step 12. Set up M1 Finance
Acting as a hybrid robo-advisor and traditional investment brokerage firm, M1 Finance will be used to make you money while you sleep until you become a millionaire.
Suppose you already have a preferred brokerage (TD Ameritrade, Schwab, Fidelity, etc). In that case, you can continue to use it with the drawback that you won't be able to automate your investments completely.
As a reminder, this guide is not affiliated with M1 Finance and makes no money from any recommended product. We recommend the best products we find so that our readers get the most out of them, not to make money. We get that from our very wise and intelligent patrons.
After setting up your investment strategy on the next page, M1 Finance automatically balances your investment accounts as you provide more money.
As for the options you pick while you set up M1 Finance, don't worry too much about it. The stocks you choose for your pie, your age, and everything else don't affect the steps you will take to become a millionaire automatically.
If you have questions on how to set up your M1 Finance account, check out the 
M1 Finance Setup page. When you're done setting up your account, return to the guide to continue reading.
Step 13: Set up your IRA
IRAs allow you to start investing while minimizing your tax-related losses. Everyone should have one because they are one of the best places to store your retirement money.
Before you open an IRA, it's important to understand which type of IRA account to open up. There are several types of IRA accounts, but we'll focus on the two most common ones for now:
In general, you want to create a Roth IRA if your yearly income—and therefore tax bracket—is currently low. If you currently make a lot of money, make a Traditional IRA since you'll probably be taxed less in retirement.
Since John is young and his current yearly income is abysmal (ergo, he isn't in a high tax bracket), he chose to open a Roth IRA on M1 Finance.
He (and you) can directly open an IRA account on M1 Finance if you're currently logged in by clicking here.
If you want to open your IRA account manually, go to the home page of your M1 Finance account and then hover over the tab that looks like this:
Your tab on the far right corner will not say "The Guide's Investing St..." but click it anyway to see these options:
As you can see, John has already opened his "Roth IRA" from the previous step and needs to add another account. He—and you—can open another investment account by clicking the "Add account" option to see this then:
Click the account option you want to set up and then keep clicking "Continue" until you get to this page:
Click "Confirm," and you're all set!
Step 14: If you can, set up your 401(k)
Just like IRA investment accounts, there are multiple options for 401(k) accounts. But we'll only focus on the two most common ones for now:
This looks similar to the IRA options above, right? That's because the differences between Roth and Traditional are the same across retirement investment accounts.
Like with an IRA account, you want to create a Roth 401(k) if your income—and therefore tax bracket—is currently low. If, on the other hand, you currently make a lot of money, open a Traditional 401(k) since you'll probably be taxed less in retirement.
John chose to open a Roth 401(k) to keep things simple. He is not in a high tax bracket and will save more money using a Roth 401(k) than a Traditional 401(k).
John (and you) can directly open a 401(k) account on M1 Finance by clicking here if you're logged into M1 Finance. If you'd like to open your 401(k) account manually, you can follow the steps/pictures on step 13 again.
Optional Step: Open more investment accounts
Besides your IRA and 401(k) accounts, you can also open many more investment accounts. Whether or not you open them up as well will depend on your needs, but make sure that you open up an IRA—and 401(k) if you can—before deciding to open these.
Remember, you can always open additional investment accounts and not invest in them! All the different accounts M1 Finance offers don't cost money to maintain. To learn about your options, head over to the 
More Investment Accounts page.
Step 15: How much to add to your accounts
John first checks his average monthly income from the 
3. New Age Budgeting page and see that it's just over $1544.
He has already started automatically paying for his education loan ($250/month), his minimum mortgage loan (example amount), and his emergency fund ($63/month), which leaves him with $1231 a month to work with:
The math John did was left per month after automatic payments. We were originally going to embed a calculator here to do the calculations for you, but no?
John's average monthly spending—also found on the 3. New Age Budgeting page—is $801. This means that if he spends his average every month, John can invest $432 a month.
The math John did to get this number was . The $1231 is how much he had left over after automatically paying for his debts and emergency fund, while the $801 is his average monthly spending. By doing the same math, you can determine how much you can invest monthly!
Getting more money page to learn how to fix that. As always, once you're done there, you can return to this page to finish the guide.Now for the fun part: Learning how to make money while you sleep. In other words, let's learn how to compound your money!
6. Prepping For The Apocalypse
8. Your Secret Sauce