#InvestmentSuccess #FinancialStrategies #LearnFromExperiences
Hey there, fellow investors! 👋
I’m on a quest to gather some insights from seasoned investors who have mastered the art of navigating the unpredictable waves of the market. If you’ve been able to successfully grow your assets and thrive in both good and bad times, I’d love to hear your success stories. 📈
So, I’m curious to know: What did you do right in your investments? What strategies and choices worked best for you?
Here are a few possible solutions that may have led to your success, and could benefit others:
– Diversifying your portfolio to spread risk
– Investing for the long-term to ride out market fluctuations
– Staying informed and continuously learning about the market trends
I’m eager to learn from your experiences and gain valuable insights that could help me improve my own investment approach. Let’s share our knowledge and grow together! 💡🚀
Looking forward to hearing your stories!
Be consistent
Don’t try to be clever
Buy and hold property
I didn’t touch them after I bought them
Pay off any debt that’s not tax deductible. Invest for the long term.
Just buy. Every month when i get paid, even when it hurts.
We started with property but it’s not a quick return and has its expenses and headaches. We moved to the Stockmarket and would never go back to property investments. Yes, the market goes up and down but if you do your research, do puts and calls, you can make money. Our only income is from dividends and puts and calls and bank interest. We have a good stockbroker who we run things by. My husband checks the market daily and keeps on top of it.
Realise there’s opportunity out there but not where everyone is looking. Most of the world is full of mediocre people that are just working a job that we hold up as analysts and smart because they do it all the time. But really they have families that they do it for and would rather be with them. That’s fine of course.
With an internet connection these days there’s plenty of opportunity out there hiding in plain sight.
Question everything, think critically and there’s wonderful investments to be found. Be clever.
Outside of that you just need to be disciplined and consistent to see results and achievements, like most things in life. Index investing is for this.
Renovating property location location location
i made my investments boring…
VDHG at first then just moved on with VGS+VAS combo.
It is so tempting to tinker around but it would be better in the long run to keep it very boring.
Got lucky that when I bought in to a broad index ETF happened to be a low point in the market.
Still messed up since throwing that capital in Super rather than the market would have been the better move. A phenomenal year in the market might be 12%, the tax break from voluntary concessional contributions is immediately 17.5/22% if you are in the middle tax brackets and you are still going to benefit off of market returns anyway. Through FHSS you can even pull that capital back out to buy a house as well.
Take some of this advice with a grain of salt. What worked for 40/50/60 year olds may not work for you today.
For example, 40 year olds have (edit: almost only*) ever known falling interest rates coupled with ever rising (and rapid) property prices so they’re inclined to advise going balls deep on a mortgage. Not that I’m advising against property, just that the advice is coming from rose coloured glasses.
Bought a house as soon as I could (21yo/13yrs ago).
I avoided the rent trap, avoided being priced out of the market (in hindsight), and learned true independence from a young age.
Honestly I spent way too many years trying to be the next Warren Buffett – picking individual stocks and trying to time the market.
I did finally figure it out and now invest in very boring market index funds (ETFs).
You’re starting younger than I did – that’s a huge advantage. Learn from and avoid my mistakes and you will get to financial independence faster than I did (in my 50s).
Investing really is simple – not easy, but simple…
Get the fundamentals right, get your partner on the same page, spend less than you earn, invest the rest – do it consistently for 10-15 years and you will become wealthy. It is truly surprising how it just snowballs over time.
Once you reach $100K+ invested it’s worth getting advice on structuring to ensure you are investing tax-effectively. But the most important thing is to get started.
1. Get the foundation right
– Barefoot investor – good mechanics for setting up accounts – and for getting you and your partner on same page
2. Get your head right – read these books (or listen on Audible)
– Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel
– Simple Path To Wealth – JL Collins
Bonus reading:
– Stop Acting Rich – Thomas Stanley (author of Millionaire Next Door)
– Playing with FIRE – Scott Rieckens
– Strong Money Australia – Dave Gow
3. Put together a 3 fund portfolio (adjusted for your personal risk profile and currency hedging)
I personally think that the Australian economy is cooked – we basically dig things out of the ground and play monopoly selling houses to each other. I also have no mortgage debt to consider. So I have weighted my portfolio to be more ex-Australia. You can and should make your own choices here.
https://passiveinvestingaustralia.com/the-australian-version-of-the-3-fund-portfolio/
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Put it into action:
* AVOID DEBT – only exceptions here should be for education and a mortgage.
Investment debt (leverage) should be done carefully and in full understanding of any downside risk (what if investment underperforms or goes bad)?
Do NOT ever use debt for depreciating assets (eg. cars )or lifestyle expenses (travel, clothing, concert tickets, going out with friends, latest gadgets,…). (pay this off first if you have any debt!)
Practice saying “that’s not in my budget right now”. Future you will thank you!
* CONSISTENTLY spend (WAY) less than you earn – aim for saving 40%+ of your take-home pay – if you can beat this GREAT!
* INVEST the rest – whether market is up or down just press buy and then hold. Time in the market beats timing the market.
* SAVE / INVEST any bonuses or pay rises – fight lifestyle creep!
* make extra concessional super contributions (these are tax-advantaged and are particularly useful once you are in higher tax brackets)
And remember – it’s often easier to increase your income than reduce expenses.
Increasing your hours, getting promoted, getting a better-paying job, taking on a side hustle – all of these can increase your earning potential- and therefore savings potential, far more than cutting your one daily cup of coffee or $20/month Netflix subscription brings.
In other words – make sure you still leave yourself a little fun money and enjoy the journey. If it takes 15 years with some fun instead of 10 miserable years that’s still a great outcome and achievement.
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Good luck!
– Aggressively dumped my all my savings into the market right after the initial covid crash.
Caught a few individual stocks (and also ETFs) at their absolute low point. Cashed in the individual stocks a year or two later and held the ETFs. CBA was a good one.
“Traded” a few stocks during the period. I made money but it was sheer luck – what I did right was nipping that in the bud and stopping it.
– Took additional start up loans every semester when I was at uni and chucked it in Super for gov contributions / ETCs. Not a lot of $ but fantastic ROI on doing that. I reckon all students who aren’t relying on the money for their current costs to or who aren’t using the loans at all do it.
– The rest has just been maxing Super and consistently buyinng ETFs.
That’s the future plan – although I’m looking into leverage options as not planning to get into property any time soon.
Simple:
Get rich slowly.
You scrutinise your expenses. Eliminate or reduce any excess fees – whether that’s insurance, banking, super.
Save % of your income without fail.
And now decide if savings are for home deposit or shares or both.
If shares, get low cost index funds and leave them for at least 3-5 years.
VGS is a great place to start.
Don’t get over complicated. Don’t get overwhelmed. Just START. You can always alter your strategy later.
Don’t double down on a bad investment.
Don’t invest money you can’t afford to lose.
Save a decent amount into HISA first before punting money on micro crap stocks.
Max super … pay down mortgage, save, DCA in to etfs … spend the rest.
Know your limitations.
I work at an institutional investor and the tools / knowledge / research that the team has access to far outpaces anything that we can get across as retail investors. I realised that any time I made money by picking a stock, it was mostly just luck. I don’t think me reading an out of date annual report and convincing myself that my decision was based on ‘fundamentals’ did much for me. We don’t know more than the market, so if we’re not ready to commit to monitoring markets as a second job and doing a CFA or whatever, passive investing is fine. Made far more money doing that than anything else.
Always reading, learning, and not be attached to dogma.
If you’re new to the markets and plan to invest, it’s probably best that you read some foundational books on investing and personal finance. Even if you do not have any interest at all, don’t just blindly dump your money into VAS/VGS or anything that anyone recommends.
Found a partner who’s also a high earner and also wants to live away from the city. Bought a big home in regional area (half the mortgage compared to average city dweller). Regular investments into ETFs. Maximising our super. Decent emergency fund
Play the long game
Learnt the lesson of speculative stocks and exploration companies early on. Still cost me but a worthy lesson.
Had a significant windfall event and all went in index funds. I sleep at night.
At the start, I was complicating investing but then created a more simplistic approach over time.
– Diversification across regions, sectors and industries
– Auto investments and auto-recurring orders to save time and automate the process
– Avoiding regular trades (especially selling and triggering CGT)
– Less or no bias towards a single sector e.g. tech
– reduced multiple ETF portfolio to 3-Core ETF portfolio
– HISA account for cash savings
Locking in 1.99% on my mortgage for 4 years was mine. It’s basically let me pay my house off in my 30s. Makes things a lot less stressful
Start early. On the basis of probability everything grows in the long run, and the earlier you get into the game the more beneficial it will be.
Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose. As the ad goes, bet (which is what an investment essentially is) with your head, not over it.
Buy on the Gold Coast
Put your etfs in us stocks. The Australian economy is cooked and all the good innovative Australian companies are listed on the us exchange now.
Buy a HOME (i,e: a place to live, not an investment) in a place you actually like to live with as little commute as possible. Then max out your pre-tax super into a high return industry superfund and never touch it. Then pay off your home. After that you might discover new priorities, like having a kid/hobbies and can afford to work less and live more. By your mid 30’s you may have enough super that it will grow to many millions of dollars without significant extra contributions so you have the freedom to not worry about life after 60.
I lived within my means, tried to increase my earnings. I gained all my wealth through property. I bought when I could, when I had equity and borrowing capacity, I bought more properties. It seems slow and always feels expensive at the start and the mortgage repayments felt like a lot but over time rents go up and mortgages get paid down and you can refinance to increase loan terms to reduce loan payments to increase cashflow.
So if imagine in the long run, let’s say you did this over 10 years and eventually you hold 3 properties valued at $3m, if the market goes up by even just 10% you made $300k, which is hard to achieve by getting a pay rise or reducing your spending.
Salary sacrifice into super in your 20s