Do you want to take a more active role in your investments? Being an active investor — as opposed to a passive one — gives you more control over how your money is growing and can make investing more interesting and rewarding. But it calls for a different approach than passive investing. To help you find this approach for your situation, here are five tips to follow.

1. Limit Your Active Endeavors

If you try to micromanage all your investments, you probably can't give any of them your full attention. This is likely to hamper your efforts and limit profits. Instead, start by identifying a few investments that have the greatest potential to thrive under active management or that you find the most interesting. 

2. Operate Like a Business

People go into business to make a profit. Your work as an active investor should also be to make a profit in a business-like manner. Running your portfolio like a business starts with consulting a professional to design a strategy, to identify strong and weak areas of your portfolio, and to streamline costs and effort. 

3. Avoid Risky Active Efforts

When many people think about 'active investing', they think about things like day trading or trying to 'time the market.' This type of active investing, though, can be very risky and often does not offer a consistent path to profits. Instead, get actively involved by learning more about companies or funds and making strategic changes designed to increase long-term success. 

4. Try Nontraditional Investments

Actively managing stocks is difficult for many average investors. But nontraditional investments may give you a chance to get your hands dirty with active involvement that's within your areas of expertise. Invest in a local business or startup, turn a hobby into an investment opportunity, or even back someone's invention for fun and profit. 

5. Craft a Holistic Management Plan

The switch to actively managing any of your investment options should be part of your overall financial plan. It often adds risk, for instance. So, rather than just jump into it, you might counteract the added risk by boosting some safer stocks and bonds to compensate. But doing so requires that you and your financial planner work together to see how this change will affect everything. 

If you put into practice the five tips, your change to active involvement in your investments will be successful and enjoyable. Want to learn more? Start by meeting with a financial planner with experience in wealth management today.