Americans have plenty of excuses not to invest. None of them can resist this simple advice from Warren Buffett.

• Many avoid investing due to lack of money, knowledge or fear of losses, according to a new survey from BlackRock.

• A simple solution to all of these problems is an S&P 500 index fund.

• Investing icon Warren Buffett often recommended such an approach.

More than a third of Americans don’t own stocks, and a new survey from BlackRock finds that holdouts cite many reasons for not being in the market.

In its People & Money report released Thursday, BlackRock listed some of the reasons why people who don’t invest say they’re staying away.

Some of the most common problems include not having enough money, not feeling like you know enough about investing, and being afraid of losses.

These are all fair explanations for not making your money grow. But there’s one simple tip from investing icon Warren Buffett that offers a solution to all of them: invest in an S&P 500 index fund, a product that tracks the performance of about 500 of the largest stocks in the United States.

“Over the years, I have often been asked for investment advice, and in responding, I have learned a lot about human behavior,” Buffett said in his 2017 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. “My regular recommendation has been a low-cost S&P 500 index fund.”

So let’s go through each of the reasons above, starting with the hardest: not having enough money. If you’ve never done it, investing is something that can feel like you need to save thousands of dollars to get started. In reality, there are very low cost entry points. For example, the Schwab S&P 500 Index Fund (SWPPX) trades at around $17 per share. You can also buy fractional shares of funds that trade at a higher price level, but in the end it’s more of the same.

Although investing small amounts may seem futile, it’s more about getting started and developing habits: after a few years, if you continue, you will have accumulated a large sum of money thanks to your contributions and your compound returns.

Second: You don’t feel like you know enough about investing. The financial markets can seem intimidating, but like anything, once you get the hang of it, it gets easier. Plus, the benefit of buying an index fund is that you don’t really need to know much about investing. Your money will sit passively in a diverse group of stocks for years.

However, if you really feel like you have questions to answer, you can always go to a physical branch of an advisor like Charles Schwab or Fidelity, said Chris Chen, a certified financial planner and founder of Insight Financial Strategists.

“They have people at the counter waiting for them to invest their money and answer their questions, and they’re basically free,” Chen told Business Insider.

Finally: being afraid of losing money. This is what keeps even the most successful investors up at night.

But the reality is, if you have a long-term time horizon and resist the urge to sell at the first sign of trouble, the S&P 500 has historically recovered from its downturns.

Earlier this year, Yale economist William Goetzmann told Business Insider that investors tend to overestimate the risks of an impending stock market crash and forget that such crashes don’t last.

Goetzmann’s research shows that when the market plunges after a long period of performance, there is a 99% chance that those losses will be recouped five years later.

“If you wait five years after this event, you will be better off. That’s what I’m telling you,” he said.

Of course, S&P 500 index funds aren’t the only products available. Jason Draho, head of asset allocation for the Americas at UBS Global Wealth Management, said he would prefer people to invest in a global index fund – an example would be the Vanguard Total World Stock ETF (VT) – because valuations for the S&P 500 are high and the index is heavily concentrated in a few select stocks.

U.S. stocks have outperformed those in the rest of the world over the past fifteen years. Since the market lows of March 2009, the Vanguard Total World Stock ETF is up 423% while the S&P 500 is up 800%. However, so far this year, the United States has underperformed international stocks, and some Wall Street analysts predict that global markets will outperform the United States in the years to come.

There’s also something to be said for the visibility of the S&P 500: It’s the benchmark that U.S. investors tend to follow, and you can track its performance on the evening news.

But ultimately it doesn’t matter much – it’s more about getting the ball rolling.

“The important thing for someone starting out is to get started,” Chen said.

Read the original article on Business Insider