The best return on investment that I know of is in ourselves. Yet, people seem to make that investment last, or not at all. It’s amazing to me why people will acknowledge how free advice is worthless, yet it’s the very thing they pursue. It may be a belief that you’re already pretty good and looking for validation, or that it’s selfish or guilt that you have no right to invest in yourself unless everyone else is 
doing it too; in other words, never.
Life happens in tandem; otherwise we wouldn’t claim to be ‘multitasking.’ Therefore, consider an investment in yourself as a concurrent priority. It’s a kin to putting your own oxygen mask on first, the better off you are, the more able you are to help others.
The ‘investment’ in you may be educational, physical, recreational or any other number of conditions of improvement. I’ll bet that the return you get will assist you in any number of personal and professional priorities.
I regularly encounter people for whom ‘the time isn’t right’, ‘need to wait until they can afford it’, or ‘when things turn around.’ Unless you ‘invest’ in your own development, the time will never be right, you’ll never be able to afford it and things will never turn around. Poverty thinking doesn’t beget results. View yourself as a bank that pays huge interest, so why wouldn’t you place your financial and time investment there?
“An investment in you always pays the best interest.” – Ben Franklin
Acquire the coaching or mentoring that will take you to higher levels; ‘invest’ in resources that will make you more valuable; take the time to educate yourself in areas which will improve your value; explore associations that will add to your perspective and sophistication.
Recessions and lack of credit don’t affect self-investment. Only a lack of self-esteem does that. Would others consider investing in your bank?