The 2nd and 3rd installments of Leading Edge, my series about companies evolving toward the interests of society.
2. Else Nutrition, a plant-based food and nutrition company with a focus on allergen-free products. Now featuring an interview with CEO Hamutal Yitzhak.
3. good natured Products, which offers over 400 plant-based products.
After 32 posts covering investing basics for the young Canadian investor, I figured I should show how I apply the principles I’ve written about thus far. Here’s what my personal investment portfolio looks like.
I currently have two TFSAs, one RRSP, and one taxable brokerage account.
One TFSA holds indexed mutual funds and ETFs and individual stocks. Its allocation breaks down into:
The rationale here is to hold even slices of every public stock market in the world, which index funds offer, with tilts toward small cheap companies, which have historically offered higher average returns compared to their large counterparts.
The index mutual funds are no load, meaning I can stuff small amount of money in them without paying a commission, compared to ETFs, which, at this bank, cost me a commission of $10 every time I buy or sell them. The mutual funds have higher annual fees than indexed ETFs, but not that much for the size of my investments, making me comfortable about using them as accumulation vehicles I’ll eventually transfer over to ETFs when I’ve saved enough for the annual fees to matter.
I do pick individual stocks in this account, and I’m fully aware that the odds are against me. That said, I’m happy to take the extra risk, tempered by thorough research, for the promise of higher returns compared to just owning index funds.
The other TFSA is at an institution that allows me to buy ETFs commission free. Indexed ETFs charge much cheaper annual fees than mutual funds, and I was interested in not having all of my accounts at the same institution, so it made sense for me to open the second account. It holds only index ETFs as follows:
Besides institutional diversification, the rationale here is to lower my overall investment costs by investing in ETFs, which are the cheapest way for everyday investors like you and me to benefit from stocks. Again, everything is more or less evenly split across the world with value and small company tilts.
I own bonds in both accounts so I have cash around in case markets drop, offering me a discount. I also own them as a second layer to my emergency fund, just in case I find myself in a royal jam. Additionally, the bonds and the real estate pay me monthly income, and I like a slug of my portfolio doing that, again for diversification’s sake.
The RRSP, and this will start to sound like a broken record, is invested in indexed ETFs, even slices, you get the deal. It looks like this:
Not bothering with the small caps here, just broad index funds that represent what their names say. I may change my mind about that later, but for now, the extra simplicity is welcomed, and the four funds are likely to do their fair share to get me to my financial goals anyway. I get granular in the TFSAs because there’s academic evidence supporting it, but also because investing is a passion. Mindlessly socking away money in a diversified portfolio of index funds will serve you well over the long term.
There isn’t much money in the RRSP or taxable brokerage account because a TFSA offers me tax-free investment growth and I can take the money out no penalty as I please. You can’t get your money from RRSPs without paying a 5-15% withholding tax per withdrawal, plus adding it to your income for the year. Alternatively, you could ask your bank to turn the account into a Registered Retirement Income Fund and start paying you out the money, which nixes the withholding tax, but you’re not retired, so that makes no sense.
I opened the taxable brokerage account just to do it, because eventually, when I run out of RRSP and TFSA room, that’ll be the only place left to sensibly invest for the long term. Unlike a TFSA, which offers tax-free investment growth, and RRSPs, which offer tax-deferred investment growth, investments in taxable brokerage accounts will ding you for every gain.
Here’s what it looks like:
The Canadian allocation is to an ETF that doesn’t pay any dividends as part of its mandate. That means I can just hold the ETF and let it rise over time without having to worry about taxes until I sell, which I plan on doing in a few decades. The investment company offers international ETFs with the same no dividend mandate, but I find their fees too expensive, so I’m eschewing proper diversification for now.
The Berkshire allocation is strategic in that no dividends is also part of its mandate, and it owns a broad selection of companies in different industries, but I’m also just fanboying out on owning Warren Buffet’s company, exercising my belief in what he and Charlie Munger have built and the structures they’ve left in place to steer the ship when they’re gone. I don’t even care that the institution where I have the account robs its investors by charging 1.5% per C/USD conversion. It’s such a small percentage of my overall portfolio, and I believe in management enough to feel good about them earning me a return I’m satisfied with over time.
I’d like to eventually make some investments in private companies when that gets easier here in Canada, but that’s just me nerding out again. As you can see, the core of my holdings is made up of index funds, which is basically equivalent to owning the entire global stock market, a strategy that has beaten active managers or stock pickers 90% of the time or so over periods longer than 10 years. Not really a popular stance in Canada, where pretty much everyone relies on active management, but the evidence is on my side.
Oh yeah, I own a little Bitcoin and Ethereum as well. They’re 1% each of my overall holdings, small as venture investments ought to be. I feel I’ve gone down the rabbit hole and learned enough to be happy to be there in that capacity.
Another oh yeah, the ETFs I own come from Ishares and Vanguard.
If you read this far, I bet you have questions. Feel free to drop them below.
I also have a book on index investing you can learn more about here.
Disclaimer: This article is meant for general education purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice as I am unaware of your personal financial situation. Consult with a professional who abides by a fiduciary standard before making any investment decisions.
I know, it’s taxes, we’ll keep it brief. The following only applies to taxable investment accounts, i.e. not a registered investment account like a TFSA, RESP or RRSP.
Capital Gains and Capital Losses
Say you own $2000 of Apple stock and it grows to $5000 over the course of three years, at which point you sell it. In Canada, the government will only tax you on half of your $3000 gain, meaning $1500 is added to your taxable income the year you sell the stock.
If the $2000 tanks down to $1000 after three years, and you sell it because you need the money, you can use your $1000 loss to lower taxable gains on other stocks you’re selling that year. If you happen to be selling another stock at a $2000 gain, you’d be taxed on $1000, which nets out to $0 when you apply your $1000 capital loss on the Apple stock.
Capital losses can also be applied going back three years and carried forward indefinitely if unused.
Dividends
Sometimes a stock, like Apple, for example, will throw a little cash your way every three or six months called a dividend. It’s an age-old way of rewarding shareholders or fund holders for hanging on. That dividend, as far as the Canadian government is concerned, is taxed as follows:
Suppose you receive $20 from Apple dividends by the end of the year. Inflate that $20 by 38%, which comes to $27.60, and that’s what you report on your taxable income. But wait, the government offers shareholders a credit on most dividends that offsets that number somewhat. The credit works out to 15.0198% of $27.60, which equals $4.145, lowering your taxable dividend to $23.455.
Interest
If you own bonds or a bond fund, they’ll pay you interest, usually monthly, which is taxable as income the year it’s received. That means you add the interest to the rest of your income, say, from your job, when reporting it for your taxes.
That’s it. Hope it helps. Especially if you’re a new investor who may have invested in a taxable account without meaning to amidst all the market enthusiasm.
There are 31 past articles in this series you can peruse.
I also have a step-by-step instructional guide to index investing.
As always, feel free to drop any investing questions in the comments.
Disclaimer: This article is meant for general education purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice as I am unaware of your personal financial situation. Consult with a professional who abides by a fiduciary standard before making any investment decisions.
I was on the radio talking about and reading from my poetry collection, The Breakup Suite.
Howl’s host, Valentino Assenza, and I also cover some basics about investing and personal finance.
My interview starts around 43:00!
Howl episode April 20, 2021. (the episode will be available to listen/download until April 28)
Here’s me on Howl for the first time back in 2015.
Learning about stocks and bonds and investing in them aren’t necessarily conducive to each other because one of those options doesn’t require you to put up any money. Safe to say that, as young people, we’re not necessarily swimming in it as a whole. I get it.
There’s a lot to learn, and getting to the point where you’re comfortable buying shares of investment funds on your own is a tall order once you’re tasked with delivering on it, even if you know a globally diversified stock portfolio has made about 7% per year over the last two decades.
It’s always difficult when you start from knowing nothing next to nothing about a subject, but I think there are common hurdles to getting invested that, once removed, should make the process of opening an RRSP/TFSA, choosing funds, buying them regularly, and selling them to fund your financial goals seem less daunting than it should.
Here’s what may be holding you back.
Investing is scary. To spell this out in a more specific way, the fact that stock prices go up and down every day, often with no discernible reason, makes the stock market seem like a less than ideal place to store money.
Here’s the antidote.
The global stock market fluctuates in the short term but goes up over long periods of time. The Canadian stock market alone has returned about 9% a year over the last 60 years and the U.S. market has returned close to 10% per year over its history. You can buy funds that own the global stock market, or a collection of stocks that replicates it, and pay a very cheap yearly fee as you add to it over the long term. The same goes for the global bond market.
The stock market feels like gambling. This is a thing people say. Mostly because there are plenty of people who use financial instruments as a way to make bets as opposed to invest. The nice thing here is you can choose to be an investor and ignore those rolling the dice with their dollars.
It’s gambling to buy shares of Shopify because you think it will beat estimated earnings for the upcoming quarter causing the stock to pop. But there’s no 20-year period in history in which owning a diversified stock portfolio has lost money. Stocks, as a whole, have a positive expected return. This a casino cannot say. Shopify could miss estimates, fall by 10%, and leave you wondering whether you should hold or sell.
Investing feels like it won’t make a difference to your quality of life. This one is 100% true in the present moment and for the foreseeable future. Why? Because it takes decades for investing to work, for the money you make to stack on top of itself and grow in spite of the normal daily fluctuations and pandemics and major shipping lane clogs we all have to deal with.
You’re not investing for who you are now, not completely anyway. It’s mostly for who you will be 20-30 years from now. Sure, there are financials goals you have now, things you want to make of your life that you need to save for. Your dreams are an essential reason to invest.
You also need to remember, though, how easy it is to forget how different you are from 16-year-old you. And I don’t mean this superficially. Your view of the world, of what has value and serves your purpose, has changed so much since then to the point of being unrecognizable.
I wanted to be in the NBA when I was sixteen. I report on Canadian business news now. The road between the two isn’t logical except to me and what lights me up inside and out, just like your journey.
What will the vibe be 10 years from now? Who knows. All I know is that I will probably want as much breathing room as possible whenever I decide I need a change, which will surely happen, change being the only constant on this rotating rock of ours. Investing regularly is how I guarantee that peace of mind.
Putting money away takes away from living in the present moment. Yes, this is technically true. Money invested is gratification delayed to get more out of that dollar at a later time. But there’s no black or white here. It’s a balancing act between enjoying yourself now and building toward getting yourself to a place where you don’t have to worry about money.
I like concerts and plays, weekend getaways, and patio brunches just as much as the next person. I’ve enjoyed my fair share of $20 plates of eggs and potatoes in good company and have no qualms about it at all. That hasn’t stopped me from saving half my income over the past three years to minimize the financial ups and downs that come with writing for a living.
If you need to maximize your dollars, as most people do, to give yourself the greatest chance at living with your version of dignity until you’re old and crusty, investing is your only option besides finding a job that pays you enough to not have to.
If you’re interested in getting started and learn best by reading, I have a short instructional e-book (scroll down to the last book on the page) for beginner investors.
There are also 30 past articles in this series you can peruse.
I’m also offering one-on-one investing chats to cover basic knowledge and equip you to invest on your own.
As always, feel free to drop any investing questions in the comments.
Disclaimer: This article is meant for general education purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice as I am unaware of your personal situation. Consult with a professional who abides by a fiduciary standard before making any investment decisions.
There are people out there in the world who are trained to manage other people’s money. They’re called financial advisors and a well-chosen one can serve a meaningful purpose in your life if you actually need the help.
Let’s begin by explaining how a relationship with a financial advisor generally works. It’s pretty simple: you hire one to handle your investments and help you build a financial plan and you pay them a fixed percentage of those investments— usually around 1%—every year for their services. Certain financial advisors will opt for a flat fee instead because they consider it fairer to be paid the same no matter the client they’re working with. Notice how that’s not the case with a 1% yearly fee, because the more you invest, the more that 1% will represent.
We’ve already learned about reasonable return expectations when investing in a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds, so what could possibly make it worth it to give up as much as 1% of that return every year to have a trusty advisor by your side?
You don’t have the time. It’s totally understandable if your life and work don’t leave you with the time you need to learn how to invest, much less manage those investments in a confident way on a regular basis. When family and career are your priorities, you’ll be able to give your all to them by interviewing a handful of advisors to find the right one for you.
You don’t have the mind. In this scenario, you could have all the time in the world but zero interest in acquiring investment knowledge. For some, the subject is such a bore to the point of being upsetting and I get it. Everything is not for everyone, and it’s senseless to be ashamed of that. That’s why experts exist in any field who can help you for a reasonable fee. And in many cases, like tax planning, and wills and estates, you’re going to require a level of expertise that probably isn’t feasible to pick up by reading up on it over the weekends. In many cases, you want the confidence of a professional having done the thing right.
You can afford the convenience. The beauty of money is that it can buy your freedom. Just like you may be perfectly able to clean your house once a week, but choose to pay someone to do it to free up a few hours for family time on the weekends, the same can be said for the work involved with managing your financial affairs. If you’d rather be doing something else, and can pay an advisor to take care of your money, going ahead and doing that will add value to your existence.
Now, what qualities does a stellar financial advisor exhibit?
If you put the points we’ve discussed into practice, you’ll find exceptional financial professionals to have in your corner and grow your money responsibly over time. On the flip side, if you’re more than willing to learn how to invest for yourself, there are plenty of books and videos out there to get you started. Consider my new book, Nine Steps to Successful Investing: A Guide for Young Canadians, to begin your investing journey and improve your financial health in no more than an afternoon.
I’m also available to teach you 1-on-1 over Zoom if you prefer.
Feel free to drop any questions in the comments!
Disclaimer: This article is meant for general education purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice as I am unaware of your personal situation. Consult with a professional who abides by a fiduciary standard before making any investment decisions.
As an investor, you’re somewhere between the person who doesn’t lose sleep over their investments and the person who can’t rest knowing they’re at risk of losing money. The former is able to take on riskier investments with the potential for a higher return. The latter will accept a lower return, so long as it means their money is protected from substantial loss. You see the trade off here. More security means less money in your pocket, and vice versa.
The key to making your investing life as easy on yourself as possible is recognizing where you fall on the spectrum and why. That way, you’ll hopefully be able to make adjustments to how you invest to make room for who you are. Let’s try and gauge where you stand with a couple questions.
Are you living paycheck to paycheck or are you able to save some money, however little, at the end of the month?
If you’re not able to save, investing is out of the question for the moment. Your basic expenses take precedent. If you’re able to save, it’s important to build up an emergency fund first—aim for a few months of expenses—before investing the remainder. Depending on your answer here, you may feel worried about putting your money to work in the stock market. While stocks offer you a positive expected return over the long term, they go up and down a lot day to day, which can cause investors to become distressed seeing the value of their investments move so wildly. The solution here is educating yourself about the stock market so you don’t get spooked by how it’s supposed to work.
Are you a saver or a spender?
To put it another way, if you have a little cash in your pocket, will you end up treating yourself to a nice meal at your favorite mom-and-pop brunch spot, buying books, clothes, or your version of a treat, or will you stash the cash in your savings account? If the money is likely to disappear into instant gratification, you’re best advised to automate your savings and investing by asking your bank to transfer a certain amount of money every month into the appropriate accounts. We all have personal histories that determine why we behave with money the ways we do. If you can stomach it, go back in time and see if you can identify your money triggers and the patterns they nudge you into.
In my case, I buy lots of books and take pride in hauling 30 or so boxes of them around every time I have to move, so I have to keep that habit in check. I have a sweet tooth, meaning a considerable portion of my grocery bill goes to chocolate, sour gummies, and other such base pleasures. I also grew up fairly well off, while the last 10 years have been a struggle financially, making me prone to save all the money I have when I should be setting some of it aside to have fun and enjoy myself.
In the end, if you can afford your indulgences while saving enough to buy yourself the future you want, you’re on the right track.
How does living in a capitalist society and having to make money to support yourself make you feel?
Are you happy to rise and grind every day to compete and earn your place in that society, or are you hell-bent on avoiding the rat race and forging a different path?
Let me know in the comments!
Disclaimer: This article is meant for general education purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice as I am unaware of your personal situation. Consult with a professional who abides by a fiduciary standard before making any investment decisions.
If you look up your favorite stock’s price on TMX and continually refresh the page, you’ll probably notice that the price fluctuates moment to moment and wonder why. Well, what it comes down to are buyers and sellers, the former looking for the cheapest price per share possible, the latter looking for the most expensive, according to their views on what the business underlying the stock is worth.
Bullish, as opposed to bearish. See below.
What happens is that a random buyer’s price coincides with a random seller’s price, triggering a transaction. They happen to hold similar views on the value of the underlying business so they’re able to do business with each other. What one investor is willing to pay is what the other is willing to receive. Now, if their agreed-upon price is a few cents higher than what the stock last traded at, you may notice a jump in price when you refresh the page, especially if a considerable number of shares changes hands. The same goes if the agreed-upon price is lower, possibly leading to a cheaper price on the next refresh.
Moment to moment stock price fluctuations also reflect the decisions of thousands of buyers and sellers acting on their financial needs. Having a view on a what a company is worth and how much you should pay for its stock will help you make a more informed investment, but if you need the money to pay hospital bills, you’re going to sell no matter what. Same goes for car repairs, a house extension because more babies are coming, or taking a trip somewhere to decompress if you really need to chill.
Longer term, though, and we’re talking decades, stocks go up —i.e. have a positive expected return on your money—because they reflect the value successful businesses create for their customers. A profitable track record is generally reflected in a higher stock price, and vice versa.
One nice thing here is that, while businesses are founded and folded every week, economies as a whole tend to grow over time, meaning the successful businesses outweigh the losers overall. So if you invest in a portfolio of stocks meant to represent every economy across the globe—at least those with public stock markets—you can partake in their growth and make yourself some money.
You can achieve this by investing in a diversified portfolio of index funds that own every publicly available stock in the world, or at the very least a representative sample. Have a look at my short guide to investing for young Canadians for step-by-step instructions. I’m also available to teach you 1-on-1 over Zoom if you prefer.
The hardest thing about investing is wrapping your head around the terminology. Even if it’s not with my help, don’t shy away from educating yourself and facilitating the fulfillment of your financial goals.
To end, it’s important to point out that there’s no way to know for sure why a stock moves up or down in the short term. There’s no electric sign somewhere announcing that Suncor stock dropped because investors are bearish, as opposed to bullish (see above), on the price of oil, or Canadian Tire stock rose thanks to consumers growing increasingly comfortable with doing their home improvement shopping in packed stores. All financial analysts ever have are educated predictions based on available information.
The only thing we know for sure is that the better a company is at making money and funding its own profitable growth, the better the chance that its stock will soar and make its shareholders wealthy.
Feel free to drop your questions in the comments!
Disclaimer: This article is meant for general education purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice as I am unaware of your personal situation. Consult with a professional who abides by a fiduciary standard before making any investment decisions.
This week I thought we’d go through the full spectrum of what people can invest in, just so you have a sense of what’s out there and what it can offer you. Should you necessarily have a little money in each of the following asset classes? Probably not, but we’ll get into that. Allons y.
Shares of stock or equity are little pieces of businesses you can buy or sell in marketplaces technically referred to as exchanges. Usually these exchanges are public, meaning anyone can buy as many available shares in as many companies as they can afford. I’ll say a little something about private equity below. Everyday individual investors like you or me tend to buy their stocks in bunches grouped together in mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which hold stocks curated based on specific investment strategies.
Some of these strategies are active, meaning they believe that through research you can pick winning stocks and avoid the losers. The rest of the strategies can be called passive, meaning they support the idea that owning every stock in a given industry or geographical area will make you money more often than research-based methods.
While there are more granular differences between ETFs and mutual funds you can explore here, you should at least know that shares of the former are bought and sold between investors on the aforementioned public exchanges, while shares of the latter are bought and sold directly with the investment companies that operate them.
Bonds are contracts between lenders and borrowers of money. Usually the way it works is the lender forks over some cash, and the borrower agrees to 1) pay the lender a certain percentage of the borrowed total in interest, typically twice a year, and 2) return the full borrowed amount after an agreed-upon period. For example, you could by a 10-year bond worth $10,000 that pays you 2% or $200 per year in semi-annual $100 payments. Everyday investors also tend to access bonds through mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, as they do every asset class below except art and jewelry to the best of my knowledge.
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are funds that invest in different kinds of real estate with the purpose of returning most of the properties’ income to shareholders. They are beneficial because they allow you to sidestep the hassles of managing properties and tenants directly. All you have to do is buy shares while the staff behind the REIT takes care of all the dirty work.
There are arguments on both sides about whether or not investors need exposure to REITs. The yays will say they’re a way to further diversify your portfolio, especially if you don’t have 100k around to make a down payment on a property of your own. The nays will point out that, unlike the steady income that comes from owning and renting out your own property, REITs can move up and down violently just like stocks, putting a dent in the diversification argument.
Private Equity refers to shares of stock that are only privately available for sale. In other words, you’re only going to be allowed to buy if someone from the company thinks you’re the right partner and reaches out to you. While you may not be able to buy private equity directly, you can buy shares of public companies that specialize in buying and selling these private companies—such as ONEX Corporation and Clairvest Group—which would fall under the rubric of active as opposed to passive investing.
The benefit of owning private equity is that it isn’t priced millisecond to millisecond like public equity is; private companies may only value themselves and let you know the value of your investment once per year. A private equity investment also tends to have a holding period contractually tied to it, sometimes over a decade or more. These qualities are good news for the nerves, because they prevent investors from checking stock quotes 50 times a day, spooking themselves, and selling an investment when they should have just held on. This kind of overreaction is an everyday reality for public equity, which can be bought or sold whenever you deem it appropriate during regular market hours (M-F, 9:30am-4:00pm).
Precious Metals include gold, silver, and platinum for the most part. Investors like to hold them as a hedge against inflation. A hedge is insurance against an occurrence, such as inflation. Inflation is the sustained rise in the prices of goods and services; in Canada, that works out to about 3.3% per year including applicable taxes. Precious metals function as a hedge here because, as inflation makes each dollar worth less every year, metals will be worth more dollars as a result, meaning their prices will rise.
Then there are more alternative investments some opt for citing a variety of reasons like diversification, passion, or having an edge like superior knowledge/research compared to the average investor. These asset classes include Art, Jewelry, Cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and arguably Private Equity, though it’s becoming more mainstream so I included it above. Do you, as a young Canadian investor, need to dedicate a sleeve of your portfolio to alternatives to succeed at making money long term? No. Not unless you’re interested in something and motivated to do the research and form your own opinions. Otherwise, stocks and bonds will do fine to meet your financial goals. Yes, the more asset classes you own, the more diversified and sheltered from loss you’ll be, but that doesn’t excuse you from knowing what you’re walking into by learning exactly how they work.
If you’re ready to learn about stocks and bonds and start investing in them for yourself, you should read my investing guide, Nine Steps to Successful Investing: A Guide for Young Canadians. To sum it up, it’s a matter-of-fact stroll through the investing process, from figuring out your financial goals, to opening your account, to purchasing shares of a diversified set of passive funds tailored to your financial situation.
Feel free to drop any questions in the comments.
I’m available to teach you 1-on-1 over Zoom if you prefer.
Disclaimer: This article is meant for general education purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice as I am unaware of your personal situation. Consult with a professional who abides by a fiduciary standard before making any investment decisions.
Yes, investing your money in stocks and bonds is a no-brainer most of the time. Why? Because the money you invest will grow over the long-term into a nest egg that you wouldn’t have otherwise had, and you, just like the rest of us, have dreams that require ample funding. Let’s put the breaks on that for a second, though, to consider a handful of situations where investing isn’t the best idea if you’re looking to live your best life.
Busy living.
When you’re in debt. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t invest if you’re currently paying off debt, just that you need to have a handle on the debt payments first. If you can’t project into the future and tell me more or less when you’ll have paid off what you owe, you probably shouldn’t be investing. There’s no point in stacking money up for your future when the interest rate on your student loans or credit card is cutting into your bottom line. To put some numbers on it, it’s reasonable to expect a diversified stock portfolio to earn you around 7% per year over a few decades, while most credit cards charge you somewhere around 20% in interest. No matter how hard you try, 7 in the black will never make up for being 20 in the red.
When you’re lacking in human capital. Your human capital is the sum of skills you possess that allows you to go out into the world and have a professional life. I write a lot and have some investing knowledge, so that’s the wheelhouse in which I look for work. Your own areas of expertise will differ, but are no less important to how you’re going to use your time. When you break it down, there’s really no comparison between investing $1000 at a long-term 7% yearly return and using that money to learn a new skill that will up your income by 10 or 20k per year. Thanks to the Internet, you may not even have to spend any money. Places like YouTube, LinkedIn Learning, and Skillshare offer plenty of free content to feed your mind.
When you’re bored. So you’re looking for some entertainment and the thought of buying Bitcoin or a few shares of Tesla sounds like just the remedy. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you do your due diligence, decide the investment is promising, and limit it to an appropriate percentage of your portfolio. The problem is that kind of work isn’t everybody’s idea of fun. Most people usually just want to drop the money casino-style and see what happens; not exactly a sound investing strategy to get you to a financially secure place. If you want to have fun, have fun, just don’t confuse investing with gambling.
When the chance at living is too sweet to pass up. Last but not least, you already know that life is short and that, to look back fondly on it, you need to go forth and take risks and pursue whatever you heart impels you to. What is right in the eyes of society may not sit well with you and the memories you’d like to accumulate. Does it make financial sense to drop five grand on a trip with the right person or to pursue your far-fetched dream of becoming a full-time poet? How about turning down a decent job in exchange for a day-to-day environment that will stretch your pockets thinner but will get you considerably closer to happy? Perhaps not because your portfolio will be worse off for it. That doesn’t matter at all, of course, so long as the experiences make it easier for you to accept and love yourself when you’re alone with your thoughts.
While we’ve learned about a few reasons why you shouldn’t invest, chances are it should still be a regular part of your life. You’re young, after all, and have the decades in front of you that you need for stocks to appreciate in value. When you’re ready to get started, you can give my short investing guide a read. It’ll run you through the investing process in plain language, step by step, so you can check this major part of adulthood off your list.
As you’ve learned over the last 24 articles, there’s a lot to absorb before you can invest your money comfortably and confidently into the world’s stock and bond markets. You need to make decisions about which financial goals to pursue, for example, as well as how long you have to save before those goals can hopefully be met. That means taking a stand about how your future’s gonna look a few decades down the line and committing to it, even though you’ll likely be slapped around by life enough to periodically reconsider your priorities.
Then there’s the whole technical side of things where you get a grasp on what stocks, bonds, and index funds are, and how the different investment accounts on offer may or may not suit your situation.
It adds up and I get how the overwhelm can start to creep in. That’s why I understand if, after all this reading, you’re still feeling hesitant about opening your account and investing. Even though you know how fortunate we are as Canadians to have access to TFSAs and RRSPs, and you can see the benefits of saving money that’ll grow on its own over time, such as fulfilling dreams of all sizes, it’s still somehow not as easy as just doing it.
To that end, I came up with a list of aspects of the investing process that might cause newbies to give up or lose confidence + my own two cents as to possible solutions.
Forever is quite the stretch and the prospect of having to tend to your investments on your own for that long can seem daunting. But I know you can do it. You know why? Because you’re taking time out of your day to read an article about investing. That means you’re already part of the chosen few who are capable of investing for themselves. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. So long as you take your time and give yourself room to learn, you will prevail.
As always, if you have any questions at all, fell free to drop them in the comments.
I’m also available to teach you 1-on-1 over Zoom if you prefer.
Disclaimer: This article is meant for general education purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice as I am unaware of your personal situation. Consult with a professional who abides by a fiduciary standard before making any investment decisions.
As a youngin’, you may have not extended your life far enough into the future to think about stuff you’d want to buy then you need to save for now. You’re already familiar with what’s on most people’s lists.
You could also buy yourself the ability to start a family, retire at 50 years old, or live in a different country every six months. The dream is yours and there are no limitations on it beyond the confines of your imagination.
The point of this post is simply to get a ballpark number in your head so you know what you’re aiming for.
Ok, so now that you’ve put numbers on your goals, how can you help yourself reach them?
Number one is maximizing your human capital, or your ability to learn new skills and thus increase your potential earning power. As a young person, you have the time to learn, consolidate your passions with educational credentials, and set yourself up for a financially stable rest of your life.
Number two is investing for the long term in a portfolio of stocks and bonds, which will grow your money for you on its own, without you having to work for it, and basically act as an additional source of income. The world of investments can be a scary place to make sense of, but it certainly does not have to be. If you’ve been looking for a nudge to get yourself started and saving for the major goals in your life, check out my new investing guide for young Canadians.
I’m also available to teach you 1-on-1 over Zoom if you prefer.
Feel free to start this Young Canadian Investor series from #1 and see if it has anything to offer you.
Feel free to drop any questions in the comments!
Disclaimer: This article is meant for general education purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice as I am unaware of your personal situation. Consult with a professional who abides by a fiduciary standard before making any investment decisions.
Trevor Abes: Writer 