the safest investment? yourself.

The one downside of dispatching with all your student loans? When you emerge debt-free on the other side, you have to figure out a new set of motivations for your financial life. Not that I have much money to throw around, even now, but I’m a very intention-driven person: with one goal gone, another must follow.

With a huge chunk of my paycheck back in my pocket, safe again from the grubby fingers of Sallie Mae, I started to mull over what I wanted my money to do for me. And I wasn’t content to consider the question as a false dichotomy (splurge on luxuries with the excess, or hoard it for a rainy day?). After much thought, I came up with a mission statement for my money: I was going to invest in myself.

One aspect of investing in yourself is pretty stodgy-sounding, albeit important: socking away money in emergency and retirement savings. Those two things are the first things I do with my paycheck every month. And I’ll definitely sit you down here at some point, hand you a stiff drink, and talk to you about the intricacies of both of them.

But honestly, I think the other kind of investment in yourself—the kind where you figure out what you’re passionate about and educate the hell out of yourself to make yourself proficient in it—that’s the hard one. That’s harder than determining a proper 401(k) investment allocation, or setting up automatic deposits to your savings account. It requires you to dig down deep in yourself, ask some difficult and painful questions about why you’re here on this earth, and then believe in the answers—even, or especially, if they scare you. Most importantly, it then requires you to become the first investor in an (unproven) venture based on that dream.

But if you do it right, I think you could be the safest investment you ever made.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve come (slowly) to a big, frightening realization: I want to be a film photographer. There are innumerable hurdles, of course. My artistic education, which started out pretty strong in elementary school, fizzled out as I grew up. I know embarrassingly little about the basic tools I’ll need to employ. And I have no freaking idea how to tell a coherent story through a series of photographs.

But all of my insides are crying out to learn how. They want to know about film stocks and light meters, and they want me to get out of my house already and start practicing, goddamnit. So I listened to those voices, and I put my money behind them too: each month, I’ve got a line item in my budget for film and development costs. Next year, after shooting a ton of test rolls, I’ll be going to an amazing, three-day film photography workshop (and yes, I’m out-of-my-mind nervous). It’ll be a looong time before I’m able to dip my toe into the water as a professional, and maybe ten years down the road—because this is a long-term investment, mind you—I’ll see some sort of financial return on those efforts. More immediately, though, the intangible benefits will make the monetary outlay so completely worthwhile.

So what are your insides crying out for you to invest in? Your health, your friends, your relationship to the outside world? Put your money where your mouth is. Invest in a pair of running shoes, or a brunch date, or a trip to someplace new. Invest in what’s important to you, and you’ll start reaping the dividends.