There is A LOT of career advice for women these days. A lot. Ask for the raise. Negotiate from the moment you get your job offer. Get a mentor; get a sponsor; build a personal board of directors.

And more women are taking charge of their careers than ever before, in ways that our mothers and grandmothers could never have imagined; and those opportunities are only expanding. For example, starting your own business has never been more accessible, as advances in technology have brought the costs down (cloud computing, anyone?) — and funding that business is also becoming ever more do-able, as more angel networks and crowdfunding sites democratize investing.

But.

But one of the most important pieces of career advice isn’t being shared. It isn’t really being talked about.

And that’s to invest the money you earn. In a diversified investment portfolio. Some amount from every paycheck, like clockwork.

Ugh. I’d rather get a tooth pulled, you might be thinking. Without Novocain. After all, doesn’t investing involve tons of work and learning lots of jargon, and doesn’t it open you up to losing all your money??

No.

No one has ever lost all of their money investing in a diversified investment portfolio.* And even if it requires some extra effort (though not nearly, nearly as much as what we are already doing, which is kicking a** every day at work), here’s what it can do:

It can build your wealth… not by a little, but by enough to make a real difference in your life. The numbers: if you’re earning $85,000 a year, having it grow in line with women’s salary curves, saving 20 percent of it annually (as personal finance experts recommend), and putting that money in the bank — after 40 years, you will have saved $1.5 million.

If you instead invest that same amount, in a diversified investment portfolio, in 40 years you’ll have another $1.5 million, or $2 million, or more. (We calculated this using up markets and down markets, and you end up with these amounts the majority of the time.)

That’s life changing.