Stocks/shares investments

This is how I went with it.
I was working, I had about $11k in the bank (no credit card debts). I felt like that money was wasting, so I took $5k and put it in the stock market while I worked.
That 5K soon enough turned into 7, in the meantime my bank account again reached 12k or so (I'm not a big spender so after expenses and taxes I was netting about 1k/month from my salary). Again, I added 5-6k to the stock account. I did that for years, portfolio growing from its own growth plus periodic injections from what was left of my salary after expenses. I think I started when I was around 31 years old, so in about 13-14 years it was high enough that I could decide to retire.
 
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This is how I went with it.
I was working, I had about $13k in the bank (no credit card debts). I felt like that money was wasting, so I took $5k and put it in the stock market while I worked.
That 5K soon enough turned into 7, in the meantime my bank account again reached 12k or so (I'm not a big spender so after expenses and taxes I was netting about 1k/month from my salary). Again, I added 5-6k to the stock. I did that for years, portfolio growing from its own growth plus periodic injections from what was left of my salary after expenses. I think I started when I was 31 or so, so in about 13-14 years it was high enough that I could decide to retire.

Yeah, I wish I'd cared about this a lot earlier. I'm 41 now.

But I've had some hard lessons to learn about money - so I guess I wouldn't have been ready before anyway :)
 
I agree with nearly everything people have been telling you, but I'll add a couple of extra thoughts. I first bought real estate, but not just anywhere. I found a LOCATION I knew was going to take off (Holiday resort town that was just beginning to get popular as the next closest town was 'sold out'). I bought 2 properties and had them rented out and managed for 10 years. The rents and tax benefits paid my mortgage interest (interest only loan) and running costs. After 10 years, The properties had both doubled in value so I was able to sell them, pay out the full debt and have plenty for further investment in managed funds.
There are two ways to invest in either funds, or shares: you look for safe funds with low growth, but high dividends, or you take more risk for high growth. I have a mixture of both and last year had a return of 15% on my investment. I use (and pay for) a professional boutique financial advisor who does all the heavy lifting and pay 0.55% of my total portfolio in fees. Finding the 'right' advisor takes some effort and research, but it is VITAL. Fortunately, after visiting a few I got some recommendations from friends which helped. I spent a year planning before I invested in the funds just to make sure I got everything right, then I retired from full time work!! :)
 
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Yeah, I wish I'd cared about this a lot earlier. I'm 41 now.

But I've had some hard lessons to learn about money - so I guess I wouldn't have been ready before anyway :)

It's very doable at any age, so don't get discouraged. People who do best are the ones that are patient and persistent, as @wolfing; pointed out. Often people panic when the market crashes, but if you're persistent on putting regular payments into your investments (if it's an index fund, or a large portfolio to minimize volotility) you realize market crashes are awesome, because:

1) The market always eventually recovers.

2) While the market is at its low, and you're making the same payments into your investments, you're essentially buying WAY more shares at a much lower price. Bargain! Then when the market recovers, all of a sudden your investments are worth much more, because it's like you just invested in a bull market.
 
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I use (and pay for) a professional boutique financial advisor who does all the heavy lifting and pay 0.55% of my total portfolio in fees. Finding the 'right' advisor takes some effort and research, but it is VITAL. Fortunately, after visiting a few I got some recommendations from friends which helped. I spent a year planning before I invested in the funds just to make sure I got everything right, then I retired from full time work!! :)

As @Corwin; said, if you're going to use a financial adviser, it's key to find the right one. If you can find one that does not work on a commission, that might be ideal. They usually work off the commission of various funds that they sell, so it's in their interest to not sell you un-managed index funds, since they wouldn't be able to make a living off of it. Again with management expenses, even half a percent could mean 5 to 6 digits worth of fees that could have gone to you instead.

This Article Explains it well

I would argue that you do not need a financial adviser (in over 15 years, I have yet to find a financial adviser that could recommend funds that would beat the market average of 7% over the long term, even with crazy funds that started out over 20% in the first few years), as long as you do your due diligent research prior, then after that you only need to spend about 30 minutes every year re-balancing your portfolio percentages.
 
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Also, I'm not that smart.

For instance - let's say I have $10K in debt and $10K cash to invest.

If I pay that debt, how would I go about investing? Then I would have to save up money over a long period of time - which while it might be "cheaper" from that perspective, it doesn't leave a lot of potential for a return on investment for a long time.

Is the idea that I would instead invest minor amounts of money over time instead, or?

I thought the general notion was that, the more money you have for investments - the more you can expect to get in return through smart investments. Which should mean that I'd be able to pay off the debt eventually without missing a beat in terms of investments.

As for a "fun" account - I think that sounds good :)

It depends on the type of debt.
If you have a mortgage at 3% interest rate, then it does not make any sense to pay it off as your expected returns from investments should be higher than that (in addition to the house value hopefully going up).

If your debt is credit card debt at 40% interest rate per year then you should do everything you can to pay it off quickly, because otherwise it doesn't matter how much you invest, it is unlikely to generate more than 15% a year (unless you're a very lucky SOB).
 
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As @Corwin; said, if you're going to use a financial adviser, it's key to find the right one. If you can find one that does not work on a commission, that might be ideal. They usually work off the commission of various funds that they sell, so it's in their interest to not sell you un-managed index funds, since they wouldn't be able to make a living off of it. Again with management expenses, even half a percent could mean 5 to 6 digits worth of fees that could have gone to you instead.

This Article Explains it well

I would argue that you do not need a financial adviser (in over 15 years, I have yet to find a financial adviser that could recommend funds that would beat the market average of 7% over the long term, even with crazy funds that started out over 20% in the first few years), as long as you do your due diligent research prior, then after that you only need to spend about 30 minutes every year re-balancing your portfolio percentages.

Two small points: First, using an adviser most of my funds have beaten the market average and all at least equalled it. Second, an adviser is often able to get a better deal on costs. I get wholesale funds rather than retail, which ends up saving me several percentage points. I have found using an adviser is worth the cost since they are experts in the field, they know much more than I do and it's in their best interest for me to do well. However, in the end, it's a personal choice.
 
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I recommend heavily investing in Bitcoin.

But diversify your portfolio - I hear penny stocks are the future.
 
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Two small points: First, using an adviser most of my funds have beaten the market average and all at least equalled it. Second, an adviser is often able to get a better deal on costs. I get wholesale funds rather than retail, which ends up saving me several percentage points. I have found using an adviser is worth the cost since they are experts in the field, they know much more than I do and it's in their best interest for me to do well. However, in the end, it's a personal choice.

Over the short term, probably. But rarely over a period of 15 years or more. At that point it's just luck (and most of the ones that do match it over 15 years, are just glorified index funds anyways, but with extra fees on them, making you even less money over time). I'm willing to bet that if we took your portfolio for the past 20 years, and include all the extra fees you've paid, it would not beat the market average.

On top of that, the half percent your paying your adviser, is costing you a lot of lost money. If you invest 20k a year (fairly average for someone with employee matching and re-investing their tax returns), over 25 years (40 to 65) then that is more than 75k of money you've lost. And that doesn't include front end load fees, other fees. How much are you paying for your MERs on top of what you pay your adviser? If you're paying 1.5% (2% total) instead, that's another 125k you've lost over 25 years. In other words, getting a financial adviser to manage your funds, instead of just investing in a market average index fund with MERs of .5% or less, you just lost a quarter of a million dollars in fees alone.

Most advisers are not experts in their field. Most of the time they do take some weekend courses, but rarely would you find one that has some sort of bachelor's degree in business and finance. And if those are the ones selling you mutual funds, i'd be asking them to show you their portfolio over 15 years, and see if any of them aren't index funds. Did your adviser tell you that most funds will not beat the market average over 15 years? This has been common knowledge in the investing field for decades, but if your adviser is not telling you this before he pushes his funds on you, he's being dishonest, plain and simple.

I've had other people's advisers try and convince me that their mutual fund is the one to buy, and is and will continue beat the index. I ask them 2 simple things:

1) Has this fund been available for over 15 years?
1) Show me proof of your investment in this fund since inception.

None of them can. Because they only measure their mutual funds by past performance. None of them were "expert" enough to know how it would perform at the time of inception.

There are some rare exceptions to this. If you buy a stock in an old company with a ton of diversified holdings. For example, Berkshire Hathaway. Why? You're basically buying a stock that consists of one large index fund. But since just 1 share costs a quarter of a million dollars, this is for investors that already have a portfolio consisting of 8 to 9 digits or more.
 
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I've had other people's advisers try and convince me that their mutual fund is the one to buy, and is and will continue beat the index. I ask them 2 simple things:

1) Has this fund been available for over 15 years?
1) Show me proof of your investment in this fund since inception.

You had me at hello. I love you :heart:

A great majority of advisers sell products on commissions or sell orders. Its why I recommend finding one with the mindset of a teacher. Someone that can explain why they are offering this advice. If they can't or won't break it down till you understand it.... then they are not right for you.
 
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Caddy, I am retired, therefore the only additions to my fund come from growth and re-invested dividends. As I said earlier, I made a NET of 15% in the past year after all fees were taken out. I draw down on my capital throughout the year, and yet the value of my portfolio has not decreased since the GFC and has actually increased in the last few years, so my adviser must be doing something right!! :) Oh, she has 2 degrees and is licenced by the Gov't.
 
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Caddy, I am retired, therefore the only additions to my fund come from growth and re-invested dividends. As I said earlier, I made a NET of 15% in the past year after all fees were taken out. I draw down on my capital throughout the year, and yet the value of my portfolio has not decreased since the GFC and has actually increased in the last few years, so my adviser must be doing something right!! :) Oh, she has 2 degrees and is licenced by the Gov't.

Yep, and the S&P 500 performed at over 20% this year. It's been a bull market since the GFC, so everyone is doing well. Your adviser is just riding the wave, but still under performing the market. If one had just started to invest at the worst possible time during the financial crisis, they would still seen just under a 10% gain on average since then (and that's with almost half that time spent to recover to even).

My point is not to tell people they won't make money with an adviser. They will. But if they want the best chance of maximizing those returns, be a DIYer. Do the math, and consider the how it impacts you in the long run. I like what @Wisdom; said "Someone that can explain why they are offering this advice. If they can't or won't break it down till you understand it…. then they are not right for you."
 
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Don't worry, my adviser explains everything in great detail. It doesn't matter too much what the S&P 500 does, I live in Australia and I have to invest in our market, both domestic and international. My investments here have out performed our market by several % points overall; that's the bottom line for me I guess!! :)
 
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Personally I hardly spend any money at all as I got an extremely humble life style.
But I just got tired to have an interest rate of 1-2% at my bank and see the money rot away. I don't have a huge amount of money, but enough to be worth to invest it.

First off I thought like "the most stable icrease I can get is via gold/silver". And well…that was true until shortly after I bought it. I didn't check recently but after purchasing fees and stuff I am probably still at around -25 to -30% after four years and before inflation.

But I kept the metals and a year ago I started to invest into the stock market as well.
I have no experience though and disregard most "safety" measures for the most part. Well, I don't put all my money on one horse though, but I still like to gamble with my money quite a bit.

So what I did was to think about companies of which I though of having more understanding in the products and industry than the majority.
I did not invest in bitcoin but that's exactly what I am talking about: When 5 years ago you were absolutely certain that crypto currencies have to be the currency of the future, it would have been a waste not to invest into it (though whether you would have sold at 200% or at 1700%, or waited until it is too late is another question).

Anyhow, I invested in some companies which had some great technologies and trends coming ahead. Like 3D-Xpoint Memory technology for example.
And after less than a year for I am at about 35% in the green zone on average.

The only stock which did horrible I bought was actually the one I was "closer" to the consumer market: AMD. Thought like with their new stuff coming out, the stock prices should finally increase a bit. Well…they dropped for 34% till now. Obviously everyone else had the same expectations and AMD didn't live up to these.
In hindsight it was probably just too obvious.

Anyhow, I am probably not the best person to get advice from if you want to have an solid investment.

Two words of advice though:
as mentioned before: Doing investments while having debt with a 5% interest or higher is just stupid and can backfire quickly. Only use money you don't have an immediate use for. Having to sell your stock because you need a new car immediately while the stock just crashed for a few days, is extremely unfortunate. There are always up and downs and you don't want to be forced to sell at downs.

Also check out not just the fees of your bank but also taxes.
For example I am paying 15€ for translactions up to 3k and 0,5% for transactions higher than that. That means that with just 1500 you are already at a 1% loss by doing nothing, making investments below 3k kinda stupid.
Also dependent on the country you live in there might be massive taxes or tax cuts. For example tax cuts, if you keep the money for a minimum of x years.
Furthermore dividents might also not be the greates idea due to tax. A divident of 2% (yearly) might sound nice, but if you have to pay like 50% taxes and other social fees on that, leaving you with 1%, that alone is not a big gain.
Really all depends on how the market and income is taxed in your country, and this even heavily differs within Europe.
Just be aware that if you have 30% of wins on paper, this can easily shrink down to 20% or even 15% due to taxes and if you add in an inflation of 2% per year and the transaction costs…

E.g. in Germany you can buy and sell Gold without any taxes if you keep the gold for one year or longer. The situation with taxes on stock is quite similar as well in various countries (some have minimum margins and so on).
 
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I see I was right to ask this question here. I'm frankly surprised so many of you have so much experience with this sort of thing - but I guess that's the result of me always having isolated myself from the "financial" world.

Also, it seems you've gone through a lot of trials to reach this stage of knowledge - and that can only benefit me.

I have another question:

If I wanted to do all this manually - without paying someone to do the actual work (however cheap and competent) - how would I go about it?

I mean, I've never invested money in anything - so I assume there's some kind of platform and ruleset in place for the process of investing in itself. Some kind of website or portal? Maybe I absolutely need a "middle-man" due to legal restrictions - or?

As you can tell, I'm a n00b in this field :)

All your continued insights are most welcome!
 
It depends on the type of debt.
If you have a mortgage at 3% interest rate, then it does not make any sense to pay it off as your expected returns from investments should be higher than that (in addition to the house value hopefully going up).

If your debt is credit card debt at 40% interest rate per year then you should do everything you can to pay it off quickly, because otherwise it doesn't matter how much you invest, it is unlikely to generate more than 15% a year (unless you're a very lucky SOB).

I got rid of that kind of debt many years ago. Even as a layman - it was pretty obviously a very bad spiral and I opted to consolidate all my shit after getting a decent job.

I've been committed to having no debt since then, but I caved and bought a (relatively cheap) new car 6 months ago. I knew it wasn't the most financially sound decision - but it was deliberate and I really needed one I could rely on - and I knew I could pay out the loan not too long after, if I felt like it.

Don't remember the interest rate, but I know it's not exactly favorable. I mean, not a lot of loans are :)

I think I'm paying something like 20K Danish Crowns in loan expenses for a car that cost 120K total - and I paid 20K up front. I believe it's just under 6% "ÅOP" - which I guess is called compound interest rate in English?
 
How realistic is it to expect a ~10% yearly return by doing relatively safe investments?

If I could manage that, my own homemade math tells me I should be able to retire in about 13 years :)
 
Oo, one of my favourite subjects :)

A lot of good stuffs had been said already. But here are some ( Nordics specific stuffs )

In sweden we have something called ISK ( Investment Saving Account ) I think there is something similiar in Denmark. But the danish one is limited to 500 000 danish crowns, so for your sum it should be perfect. This account has a fixed tax of your full amount per year, but no tax on your gains. So either start such an account, or start a capital insurannce. Otherwise you have to pay 30% tax on all income.

Use an online broker, nordnet is a good one in my opnion, they are cheaper for buying and selling and they also have a lot more to choose from.

If your after returns, you can get better than what the other people recommended here, for example this fund: http://www.carnegiefonder.se/fonder/strategifond-a/ , that fund started in 1988, and has beaten the stock market average since then. Just an example there are a lot of different funds. I can specify more if you decide to go that way.

These days there are also a lot of day traders who make huge returns, but they are full time expert traders, look at this for example: https://www.shareville.se/medlemmar/it4ever/portfolios/86942/yield check his five years return :D ( 5 år for english people who want to check ). However his the best so don't expect to reach that level. Just to confirm that is it possible.

Another thing I have to say is that if you are willing to take the risk it can really payoff to invest in smaller stock companies. Especially in the fields of technology or medtech. This is high risk. But you can never lose more than 100%, however you can gain large returns for example: https://finance.google.com/finance?q=VITR,+Vitrolife ( check 5 years ) , in my view it is kind of a no brainer that this company would do well, people are older and older than they get children. So the need for the services Vitrolife is offering is very likely to increase. Same with internet of things companies for example. If you know technology you can do pretty well. But if there is a crash you might lose most of your capital in this way.
 
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Oo, one of my favourite subjects :)

A lot of good stuffs had been said already. But here are some ( Nordics specific stuffs )

In sweden we have something called ISK ( Investment Saving Account ) I think there is something similiar in Denmark. But the danish one is limited to 500 000 danish crowns, so for your sum it should be perfect. This account has a fixed tax of your full amount per year, but no tax on your gains. So either start such an account, or start a capital insurannce. Otherwise you have to pay 30% tax on all income.

Use an online broker, nordnet is a good one in my opnion, they are cheaper for buying and selling and they also have a lot more to choose from.

If your after returns, you can get better than what the other people recommended here, for example this fund: http://www.carnegiefonder.se/fonder/strategifond-a/ , that fund started in 1988, and has beaten the stock market average since then. Just an example there are a lot of different funds. I can specify more if you decide to go that way.

These days there are also a lot of day traders who make huge returns, but they are full time expert traders, look at this for example: https://www.shareville.se/medlemmar/it4ever/portfolios/86942/yield check his five years return :D ( 5 år for english people who want to check ). However his the best so don't expect to reach that level. Just to confirm that is it possible.

Another thing I have to say is that if you are willing to take the risk it can really payoff to invest in smaller stock companies. Especially in the fields of technology or medtech. This is high risk. But you can never lose more than 100%, however you can gain large returns for example: https://finance.google.com/finance?q=VITR,+Vitrolife ( check 5 years ) , in my view it is kind of a no brainer that this company would do well, people are older and older than they get children. So the need for the services Vitrolife is offering is very likely to increase. Same with internet of things companies for example. If you know technology you can do pretty well. But if there is a crash you might lose most of your capital in this way.

Yes, I've checked out Nordnet today and it seems to be the obvious platform of choice.

I've not yet decided if I want to risk anything big - but I will certainly wait until I have a little more cash in reserve. Thankfully, I'm very good at not investing my emotions in money :)

So, I won't panic or get over excited. I'm sort of the highly pragmatic type - and I would never risk "everything".

I intend to research a while and figure stuff out - and I've all but decided to pay out that car loan so I can start debt-free.

If there's a way to retire in 10-15 years - I'm determined to find it :)

Star Citizen should be about finished by then!
 
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