GIRL BOSS 101| Let’s talk Investments

Hey guys,

It’s been a busy but very productive week, it’s nice to be finally rewarded with some weekend time and immerse myself in a complete self indulgent routine. This includes blogging, washing my hair, grocery shopping and taking long walks in nature.

As someone who believes in having a balanced and well-rounded life, I thought I speak on the topic of investments. How are you making your money work for you? When I was young, I had always been surrounded by men who spoke quite intensely about investments and money. It was literally their hobby! which I found rather fascinating. Not a lot of people like to talk about money; it is such an uncomfortable topic and it is coupled with limiting belief systems. Money is very important! It is part of the things that will contribute to you having a well balanced life. Money, in itself, isn’t going to solve your life’s issues but when we equate Money to Abundance, the feeling of having an abundant life, where you are able to navigate your way round the world and see where you can serve people, then money comes in very handy. I mean, if we are not abundant ourselves, how are we going to contribute to eradicating poverty? You can only help when you have the means to help.

With that being said, let’s talk investments! Investments in itself has often been associated with men with great intellect and analytical skills, finance people-so to speak, as if they have two heads. Investing, when you truly break it down, just simply means a way to grow your money, it is putting your money in an idea with the hope that this money will grow. Investments come in lots of different forms, we invest in our appearance with the hope we will attract the right people or opportunity; we invest in our education with the hope that a few years down the line we would find a good job to give us good returns on those investments. The stock market works the same way! you invest in companies you believe will grow in profits and in return for the investment (shares/stock) you have made in that company you will get good return on your investment. Simple!

I suppose the question is how do I go about it? I don’t know what companies to invest in ? How do I read annual reports and accounts?

In the olden days, I can definitely say it was a lot harder to invest money because you literally had to call a broker in order to buy shares in a company. That process in itself seems quite intimidating to a novice. But now, thanks to the internet and apps, we no longer need to interact with anyone in order to know where to invest. There are various saving apps out there, all offering various plans. The ones I use are:

i) Hargreaves Lansdown
ii) Money Box
iii) Bricklane

Hargreaves is one of the biggest investment services provider out there and offers a lot of great investment plans and advice. You can access all of their services and advice on their website here.

Money Box is a cool app, as it is rounds up your spare change to invest in a diversified fund of stock and shares. So if you are frivolous spender, this might work perfectly well in your favour.

Bricklane, on the other hand, is tailored to the real estate residential property market (within London and outside). They operate as a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust). This means they hold your money in trust and distribute 100% of the profits made from the investments they made in the real estate market.There are a lot out there to which you can participate. Although I would say Hargreaves offers the best platform for all sorts of investments on the FTSE challenge see here. They have also introduced some America stocks to their platform, which allows you to participate in the American markets as well. So you too can a be part of the success of Netflixs’ or Facebooks’ of this world.

If you are unsure of what companies to invest in, then do some research on what companies are doing well at the moment. You can be quite emotional with your investments and put money into things that mean the world to you. For example Michael Bury from the Movie & Book: “Big Short” invested in only Water. You can invest in tech, because you believe tech is the best way to improve tomorrow’s world. If you don’t want to be an emotional investor and just want it for the money then your sole focus should be on the Company’s performance on a 1,3,5 & 10 yr basis. Small upcoming companies are great to assess because their results tend to peak and trough because they are still new to the market. You can assess the performance of these companies on the stock exchange website or the company’s website. I focus on their i) their market cap ii) share price iii) dividend pay outs iv) announcements in the press.

Just to keep in mind, I am not an investment expert but someone who is keen on how our economy works and passionate about contributing to its success.

I do, however, feel the best investment you can make which will give you the maximum return is investing in your skills and knowing multiple ways to attract money to you. It is having a diversified stream of income so that when you have retried from putting in effort (a.k.a working) these investments can reward you abundantly. This could be building a product or service which pays you without you being present or your input (completely passive).

 

I have had enough of writing now! I hope this has been useful to you and you can start making small changes to your life now.

 

Speak soon!

Tomi. xoxo

 

 

 

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