Interesting Investments (Pt 2)

At the end of part 1 we were left with 4 choices:

1. Pay off more of our mortgage (boring!)

2. Put it in the bank (even more boring)

3. Buy some magic beans (hmmm, interesting)

4. Invest to try to earn some passive income (oooh, really interesting!)

Now I have played sharemarket games at different times and had a bit of success, so it's not a totally foreign concept to me. My Dad is also a pretty successful investor, so an excellent sounding board for me.

Now Dad uses CMC Markets, a very old school, 1992 looking website with epic charting abilities and more information that I would ever know what to do with - so I signed up. IN the process they automatically opened up a Macquarie Bank Account. I proceeded to put some money into the account.

But then the snags hit. It took days to get the account set up and I couldn't fund the trading account without the bank account set up. It's 2021 people - it should not be this hard!

I jumped online and did a Google search and came up with E-Toro . In a matter of minutes I has an account set up, a W8 form complete and a couple of hundred dollars in my account. Simple and fast! Then went looking for shares to buy. It was super fun, but all the advice I had was for Australian shares traded on the ASX. E-Toro didn't list any of them!!!

So back to another faithful search and I came across Superhero They aren't your average broker and they are brand new, but they seem great. A really nice modern web interface (mobile coming soon!) and cheap as chips $5 brokerage on shares and $0 brokerage on ETFs. Sounds good to me!

A Lot At Stake

You know how when you think you've found the perfect thing, there always seems to be a glitch? Well the glitch for Superhero is this - they only trade on the ASX. I had plenty of information on the US markets as well so I went hunting for a cheap way to trade on them. And that's where I came across Stake!

Now the thing about Stake is (there's always something), they charge no brokerage. But they do make money from by charging a foreign exchange fee when you deposit money into your account.

The other thing to be aware of is they only have certain stocks on their site. From their website:

"Stocks must have a market cap over US$500m and a share price over US$1. ETFs must have over US$300m funds under management."

The interface is super smooth and easy to work with. The charting technology is a little basic, but that's why I've kept my CMC Markets account. Best of both worlds.

So now I had the ability to trade, a bit of cash, and was about to go on holidays from work for Christmas. Now I just had to figure out what to invest in...

Fool Me Once....

I went searching on the internet for stock picks and newsletters and the overwhelming favourite appeared to be The Motley Fool. So I signed up, paid for their Stock Advisor service and waited. My first list came through and I was a bit confused...These are all US stocks.

Doh! They have a Motley Fool in both countries!

I had already put some money into some shares from the first list and they seemed to be going ok, so I signed up for the Aussie Stock Advisor on a great discount. I decided to also sign up to their Extreme Opportunities and Dividend Investor advisory services.

From here it was pretty smooth sailing. The Motley Fool do send an insane amount of emails with extra offers etc but they're easy enough to ignore.

In The Tube

If you want to know something, you ask someone.....or something. Hey Google! So I had the Motley Fool bunch, but what about my other source of information, Youtube?

Talk about an information overload! The amount of information available on investing is just mind boggling. It's like finding a needle in a stack of needles in a haystack, inside another stack of needles, stored in another haystack that's covered in venomous snakes that are covered in other needles. Incredible. If you don't believe me, just type'Investment Advice' into the search bar. Don't say I didn't warn you! But in my search, I did come across a fantastic channel run by ASX Investor and three fantastic investments in Afterpay (ASX:APT), Weebit Nano (ASX:WBT) and Brain Chip (ASX:BRN)

This video also featured another favourite in Jason Pizzino

Everything was sailing along nicely. Time to relax over the Christmas break and put my head into learning as much as I could.

Everything was fine.......mostly

To be continued in Part 3

Right In The Hip Pocket (book)

Way back in 2015 I signed up to a nifty little service called Pocketbook. This service uses both desktop and mobile app to help you track your spending and more effectively budget. I find it fantastic for letting me see where we are spending and where we might be able to save a little more here and there. Setting up the app is really easy. All you need to do is download the app on your device (buttons will take you there)

Step 1

The first thing to do is to connect your bank accounts. It's really straight forward and secure. Don't worry, it won't steal all your hard earned dollars, it only reads from your accounts to translate your activity.

Step 2

This is where you can visualise your incoming and outgoing activity. You can filter by clicking on the chart columns, use the calendar to define date ranges and see both category and value groups of transactions

Step 3

This is where you can explore your through your activities, and categorise any that are not automatically categorised by the apps AI.

Step 4

And now you can get to the real guts of it. Start setting some spending limits by dollar amount in each category. The app will then give you a bit of a kick in the pants if you spend too much!

All in all, I really like the app. There is a whole lot of functionality that I have not gone into, including tax deductions (they have an app for that). It has undergone a facelift since 2015 and is a really nice interface.

If there was one improvement I wish they would make, it would be to update their web version. At the time of writing I don't believe they will be but it would be fantastic if they did.

Go get Pocketbook, save yourself some money and buy a t-shirt from My Threadless Store

Interesting Investments (Pt 1)

​2020 was a strange year for everyone. The COVID19 pandemic, lockdowns, bushfires, economic devastation and recovery. The impact of the pandemic (still going today) has crippled the entire planet. The world will simply never be the same, all thanks to a microscopic little virus. Kinda terrifying isn't it? Here we were wondering about terrorists, war and the stock market crashing, but it all it took was a tiny little bug.

To say the loss of life has been tragic is a gross understatement. It's been just terrible. Second to that is the economic devastation that has befallen so many industries. Local businesses closing down en masse. Thousands unable to go to work and while government economic support is good short term, what about those that could not keep their jobs?

I was fortunate enough to remain employed, but my beautiful wife Sarah was made redundant after 17 years with the same company.

Money, Money, Money

While it has been a nice break and great to support the kids through remote learning, it has made me think about our long term financial situation. The other thing that came to light was Sarahs work situation and long term effects. See Sarah was working for a non-profit organisation with lower salary expectations but an included vehicle in her package. Now this is great while your employed, but this also means that your getting much less superannuation employer contributions (for the Americans I think that's your 401k).

The maths behind it can add up really quickly (feel free to correct my maths!) Example: Your salary is $50,000 a year. Your employer is paying 9.5% contribution. You work for 15 years with a company and your super account earns 5% interest. When you leave that job your super would be around ~$75,000 (excluding fees etc) The same calculation done at $65k would leave you with ~$100,000. And that's just your super. So while a vehicle is nice, the extra income and super benefits I believe far outweigh in that scenario.

Right In The Hip Pocket(book)

This made me look at our finances and wonder what our potential was. The first step was to look at the way we were spending our income. Years ago I signed up for Pocketbook (My Review Of Pocketbook), a nifty little app that tracks all of your spending etc. (You can find out more in this post) You can connect your bank accounts and then categorise your spending into things like groceries, insurance, pretty much anything. Once you categorise something, the app uses a bit of intelligence and will automatically categorise purchases. Nifty huh?

So I had a look at the way we were spending and made a couple of changes (changed mobile plans from Telstra to Aldi - same network, easy recharge through their app and saved me almost 50% etc) to free up some cash. I also grabbed all the coins that I've been dragging around. I had a great big money box that I just kept piling coins into. All counted, this came to ~$250!

I also decluttered, selling off unused music gear like guitar speaker cabinets, speakers, and a bunch of Boss guitar pedals and the like through Facebook marketplace.

All up I netted myself a pretty decent bag of cash - but what to do with it?

My options were:

1. Pay off more of our mortgage (boring!)

2. Put it in the bank (even more boring)

3. Buy some magic beans (hmmm, interesting)

4. Invest to try to earn some passive income (oooh, really interesting!)

Find out what I did in Part 2