How do I start investing at 25, when I'm only earning less than $2500/mth? Should I take out $500 that I can bear to part with, to invest into high risk stocks for potential capital gain?

I’m new to investing too, I think perhaps you can browse some apps for investments, like Momoo, webull, Tiger Brokers,etc. I firstly used Tiger's AI system to give me some advices for investing rookies.The AI helper can make it really beginner-friendly, and I love how organized everything is. If you're starting out, you can also even get a great welcome gift for like about 1000 SGD. the link is here https://www.itiger.com/sg/marketing/SGwelcomere... hope it can help u!

At this stage, investing into yourself (buying books on sales, communication etc) to boost your income may pay a much higher return over the long run. There are plenty of free materials online and at the library too.

Let's say you earn $500 x 12 = $6000 per year. Even if you earn 10% on that, thats $600 more per annum which will not move the needle over the long run.

Trying to go for "riskier investments" to generate higher returns often ends badly.

Set aside emergency funds, then start accumulating money to invest! You can accumulate those $500-$1k to become $5k-$10k before you start investing!

However, I do not think that you should put your money into high rist stocks if you do not fully understand what you are putting your money in or the risks you are taking. Sure, high risk high returns, but also, high risk high losses!

1) Emergency funds set aside

2) Purchase adequate insurance coverage

3) Excess monies, go for indexing (i.e. STI ETF or ABF Bond ETF) to build some baseline portfolio before looking into individual stocks.