Investing is messy, especially if you are not a professional.
To be successful, you need to have a basic understanding of different topics: banks, insurances, financial products and real estate.
But you probably don’t care about it.
What you want is to put your money somewhere, and have a 100% guarantee to get a lot more money out of it.
And without having any idea of what’s going on.
Unfortunately, this is not possible.
Risk and return are two faces of the same coins, and if you want to earn more money from your investments, you will need to take more risk.
But that feels scary.
At this point, you probably feel you have 2 choices:
1. Decide not to risk anything at all, and park all your money on a regular account or in a saving account.
2. Decide to delegate all your financial decisions to a third party, hoping for the best.
Unfortunately, none of these ways is the right one, and if you are here you probably sense it, too.
Let me show you why.
Leaving money on a regular account doing nothing is a disaster.
You basically accept to be sure to lose money each year because of the inflation.
Look what happened if you had 100 000 zl ten years ago.
Today you could buy goods worth 82 000 zł with this money. A sure loss of 18 000 zł that you probably didn’t even notice.
Putting your money into saving accounts would have been a better choice. You would have been able at least to match the inflation and to save the value of your 100 000 zł.
Sounds good?
Well, look at this graph.
This is the return that you would have got if you put some of your money into the MSCI world, an index that replicates the biggest stock markets in the world.
Almost +200%, or 4 times your money in 8 years.
Sure, in 2010 the world started to exit the big economic crisis of 2007, so you would have been very lucky to buy at this specific moment, but if you invested some of your money in stocks you could have expected around a 7% return on average each year, doubling your money every 10 years. With up and downs, of course, there is no investment that is just going up each day, all the time.
So, investing your money in stocks and other financial products looks like a no brainer.
Why leaving all your money in a saving account when you can just earn twice as much investing somewhere else?
That is true, and that’s why you could decide to delegate your investing decisions to somebody else, an expert who will know what to do.
Unfortunately, almost all of these “experts” have a huge conflict of interest.
To put it simply, instead of recommending the best financial products for you, they recommend the best financial products for the institution they are working for.
And these products were very similar to the index that I showed you before, apart from two little details that made all the difference.
Compared to the product that I showed you (an ETF, but I don’t want to get too technical now), they costed at least 10 times more and they had a slightly worse performance.
Meaning: instead of getting around a 200%, you would have been lucky to get away with a 30%, taking the same amount of risk.
A bad deal, regardless on how you want to put it.
So, if you invested in some stocks funds in the last 10 years and you didn’t earn a lot of money, you have already a good idea where to go and look for the missing money.
I am pretty sure that the hidden expenses you paid for this financial products explains at least 70% of the bad results.
What about the other 30%?
Well, I don’t really know you so I can’t say for sure, but usually there is another culprit when it comes to not getting the financial results that you want.
And the bad news is that you see this person in the mirror every morning.
I am sorry to break the news, but the other reason because your investments didn’t do well...was you.
At least on average. Look at this graph:
This study was done on American investors, and it turned out that even if they had a chance to get a chance to get a 9,9% yearly return each year, they managed to get only 3.8%.
A 6,1% difference/year, which it’s almost like give up on doubling your money every 10 years.
Yep, that’s a lot.
Why is that so?
The investors tend to move in herd, and to buy when everybody is buying, and to sell when everybody is selling.
So, that is what everybody is thinking:
The average investor buy at the top, when the financial risk is higher, and sell when it’s the best time for investing, because it feels the right thing to do.
It takes a lot of self-discipline to be able to change this, and there is no way you can outsource it to somebody else.
If in the past you made some mistakes because of your lack of your financial knowledge or for giving into euphoria or fear, it’s fine.
You didn’t know, and you were busy keeping up with your life.
But today you have a choice.
You can take back control over your financial situation, and get what you deserved from your investments. All you need to do is to step up and take this matter into your hands.
And Simplinvest will help you doing exactly that.
During this workshop you will learn a step-by-step investing process that will expand your investing knowledge, and will make you able to decide how to invest your money without trusting blindly other people.
Even if you don’t have a financial background, you don’t have to worry.
Before the beginning of the workshop you will receive a pdf I personally prepared with all the basic information you need to know about investing.
I will make it simple, but not too simple for you.
Then, during the workshop, we will go through 7 modules designed to help you getting started as soon as possible.
Here they are:
1. Financial goals: what are they and how to define them
The first step to a successful financial plan is starting from your own goals. The true risk while investing is not reaching the goals you care about. To avoid that, you need to define them clearly and give them an appropriate time horizon. In this section you will see which are the most common goals and what you need to keep in mind while calculating how much money you need to achieve them.
2. Who should help you along the way but don’t really do so
Banks, financial advisers, insurance agents, they all suffer from conflict of interest when they give you financial advice. They will choose the solution that benefits them first, and you later (maybe). Finding out which type of incentives they have will help you decide what is better for you, and in this section you will see everything you need to know about it.
3. Saving money: the first step to greatness
Saving is not a sexy concept, I get it.
Making a boatload of money is definitely more inspiring, but if you don’t know how to save, you will end up spending it all.
In this section you will see how you can save money in a painless way, using the latest discoveries from Behavioral Economics and some applications/platform that can help you have a better grasp on your spending.
Pro tip: once you start consider saving money as a gift to your future self, everything is getting easier.
4. Assess your current financial situation
Running a financial check-up is extremely important to understand where you are, and how many of the goals you chose are realistically achievable. In this section I will show you two tools you can use: your personal balance sheet and your personal budget.
After you will run some numbers, you will know at a glance how close you are to your financial goals and which actions you could take to get even closer.
5. Invest 101: understand which financial products to buy
After defining which financial goals you have, when you want to achieve them and which is your current financial situation, it’s showtime! In this section we will see in details some financial products that you can use to create your personalized plan, how to combine them and which are some traditional combinations (aka portfolios) that can help you finding the best option for you.
There will also be a review on which are the best platforms/banks you can use in Poland to access financial products, especially international ones.
6. Invest 101: understand which financial products to buy
Now that you know all the tech, you feel like ready to go?
Not so fast, there is one important thing that you need to know. You have one last enemy to defeat before starting your financial journey: you.
In this section you will see which are the most common mistakes novice investors make, and which are the bias that even experienced investors needs to fight not to lose money.
7. Put it all together and few more strategies (dollar cost averaging and rebalancing)
In the last part of the workshop you will see how to put all together, and 2 more strategies that will make your investment plan bullet-proof: dollar-cost-averaging and rebalancing.
These strategies are designed to help you stay on track with your investment plan, especially when there will be some momentary drops in the value of your investments.
They will help you keep your cool and actually take advantage of such situations.
At the end of the workshop, you will get your control over your investments.
You will be able to take financial decisions Independently, avoid very expensive mistakes and you will have a financial plan you designed in place, which will maximize your chance to earn money and making you sleep well at night.
