The Top Questions I Get About Investing

Curious to know the answers to the top questions that come up time and time again...when it comes to investing?

Turns out, you're not alone. Because everyone else is asking the same thing. Questions like...

Isn't investing really risky? I thought real estate is better than the stock market Don't you need a lot of money to invest? But, won't I lose all my money?

And the biggest of them all...

So, WHAT do I invest in...and HOW do I actually do it?

Your questions. My answers. 

Ask even more by leaving me a voice message using the Anchor app. I'll answer it in an upcoming episode.

In the meantime, find me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/mswealthyofficial/

xo

Simone

Listen in here, and where you get your podcasts:

Prefer to read the transcript?

I've spent the last five years learning from those brilliant minds in money, wealth, and investing. And now I'm part of a group of driven women who are changing the game and taking control. Don't know where to start. I get it. So join me and follow along. As I learn, apply and share the secrets towards more money, more investing and more freedom. My name is Simone Mercer-Huggins, and welcome to Ms Wealthy's kiss my money podcast.

Have you ever had that really deep burning desire to ask a question, but you didn't ask it? I remember. Oh God. I remember so like countless times where this has happened to me in school, getting my degree in the workplace in meetings, time after time, I would have a question that I just, I really I needed answered, but I didn't ask it. I don't know. I guess, fear of fingering feeling stupid or acting, you know, being looked as though I was an idiot. I don't know. I just, I didn't ask it and often I wish I had have, so the last couple of weeks, particularly as I'm talking to a lot more women about investing, I'm getting the same questions and that's good because it helps give me a guidepost around what's coming up and what are the biggest blocks and what do you need to know the most?

So I thought I'd dedicate this episode to answering the top questions that I get all of the time. And it's really increased. It's so helpful for me to hear these questions because it's been 10 years since I started investing. I can't remember the questions I had. I can't remember how far I've come. You know, I think everyone, everyone that is listening to this has their own expert area, right? Whether it's you're a mom and you just dominate that wealth, or you just are incredible at your job in whatever field, maybe you're a makeup artist. Maybe you're a designer. Maybe you work in corporate, but you know, your world inside out better than many other people around them. And it is so easy sometimes to forget what you don't know. And if that makes sense. And that happens to me all the time. Sometimes I get into this state of talking so passionately about kind of what I do and the detail about it, that I forget that I need to go back to the start.

So the top questions there's about five and they probably come up for you. So hopefully this is helpful for you. And just a reminder, if a question isn't answered here, then you can always use the anchor app and ask me a question. You can leave a voicemail question so that I can maybe even feature it and answer it for you because more than likely other people are going to be thinking exactly the same thing. Right? So one of the main questions I get is isn't investing really risky. Uh, and look, there is risk in literally everything that we do, the moment you walk outside, you have the potential to be hit by a bus. I know that sounds really morbid, but there's risk in everyday life. And more people die in car accidents than many other causes. And yet we still get up and go outside every single day.

So yes, there is inherent risk in everything. And that is the same when it comes to investing. It's the same when it comes to real estate. And it's the same when it comes to stock market, there is risk because there is volatility, meaning it goes up and down, but really the risk comes from not having a plan and not knowing what you're doing. And honestly, the biggest risk comes from acting off your emotions. So using your emotions to make your decisions rather than your logic or your intelligence, um, particularly when it comes to investing and things to do with money. And the thing is like often when emotions are heightened, like the higher our emotions are the lower our intelligence becomes. So we, we make less intelligent decisions when it comes to really anything in life. When we have heightened emotions and just think about the most incredible emotion in the world, love, you know, we can fall in love and full head over heels and have these road cut Rose colored glasses with our partner and completely ignore the mess they make and the incredibly stinky thoughts and whatever else.

And when that kind of wears off, then we start to go, you know, maybe I shouldn't have moved in so fast or I really shouldn't have negotiated or like, whatever it is. But with our emotions, it can really cloud our judgment in making intelligent decisions. And you need your intelligence when it comes to managing risk. Uh, and most of the time it's really comes down to a lack of knowledge. If you don't know what you're doing, if you don't know the game, the game you're playing, then yeah. There is going to be inherent risks because you don't know enough information to really play the game. Well, right. So when it comes to, I guess, history, yes, we've had crashes. So is the housing market. So as cryptocurrency, so as many other investments and there is inherent risk, but if you need the money tomorrow or next month, or even next year investing, probably isn't the best thing for you.

You need to have a solid foundation and know that you're investing for the long term, because that is where the profit lies. That is where you make the most money. You probably heard of something called compound interest, but Einstein called it the eighth wonder of the world, Warren Buffett's swears by it. And it is literally where the magic happens. It's essentially where you reinvest the profit that you make and then continue making interest on that profit. Okay. Second question often I get, yeah, but isn't real estate better than the stock market. This one I love and it makes me smile and full disclosure. I invest in the stock market. I also invest in real estate and a bunch of other things. So I don't discriminate against it. I think it's important for it complete diversified portfolio because different asset classes, meaning stocks perform better than real estate in some market in some periods of time and vice versa.

So it is important to have both, but when you actually look at the historical data on performance of the stock market versus real estate, the stock market takes the cake and yes, you of course can completely double or triple what you can make in real estate by being really strategic about it and doing incredible research and flipping houses and everything like that. Yes, absolutely that's possible. But when we just look at a passive investment, you know, investing in something like an investment property and leaving it or investing in the stock market and leaving it, the stock one could often does perform better based on, you know, 10 to 20 year histories. And I think some of the real estate bias comes from this dream that was sold from when we're little of owning your own home and real estate is King. And again, that's just part of, I guess, social conditioning.

We think that that's the way, but often we've never really questioned it. So again, real estate, I think, should be part of the bigger picture, but if you're looking in terms of how it performs, let's just say the data doesn't lie. Okay. The other question I get a lot to the top three question is don't you need a lot of money to invest. So that is the case with real estate. Obviously it's best if you have a 20% deposit down. So if you're buying a half a million dollar property, then 20% of that is a hundred thousand dollars. So in that case, yes, when it comes to the stock market short and said, no, uh, I kind of say as a really rough rule, that a thousand dollars is a good minimum. You can actually start with less than that. So say for example, you were going to buy ABC stock.

This is not a stock recommendation, by the way, it's just an example, a and say, ABC was trading at a hundred dollars in most markets, whether you're in the U S or the UK or Australia or wherever you're tuning in from most markets, you can just buy one stock so you can buy a hundred dollars and have one share in that company. Um, the thing is, when you look at doing that, you have broker fees and if you're paying $10 to buy $10 of a hundred dollars is 10%. And that is a huge fee just to buy into the market. So that's kind of why I say a thousand dollars is a rough, good God to start with as a minimum, ideally, because then you're not consistently eating away at your profits with your face. So you don't need to start with much. You can literally start with as little as a thousand dollars.

The barriers to entry, the barriers to buy in the stock market are a lot less than it is with real estate. Uh, that often shocks people. I think that, well, certainly from what I've noticed of lot of women seem to have the impression that you need tens of thousands of dollars to even start. Um, and I think that's often why they don't even look into the possibility. Uh, so yeah, pretty cheap. When you think about it, it's pretty low to get in and start, you know, that investment portfolio way sooner than you probably thought, alright, question number four, it's kind of, this is more of really a statement and I think it comes back to risk. But one of the biggest things I hear is, you know what, I'm just so afraid of losing money. And it's, it's a funny one, this one, because when you look into just human behavior and human psychology, we are wired to feel loss more than we feel gain.

So for example, if I gave you a hundred dollars, you'd be joyous. You'd be really happy. You'd be like, just, this is amazing. And that would probably last maybe the day. However, if you lost a hundred dollars and it fell out of your pocket and you realize later what the psychologists say and what research shows us is that our brain is essentially wired to struggle with that way more than any benefit, we would have got a referral for a hundred dollars of gaining a hundred dollars. So you probably lament over that loss four days, maybe even weeks. And remember it, months down the line and probably forget gaining anything. And it's look, it's part of our primal brain. It's part of just how we're wired. We're wired for survival way, uh, wired to look for danger and loss often equals danger in terms of our history, but that's kind of partially why I think there is so much struggle around this loss mentality.

A lot of it, like I said, comes from managing risk and you can do that and invest in a certain way that suits your risk objectives and how much risk you can actually tolerate. Uh, but often the biggest loss in terms of losing money in any investment, um, the stock market or cryptocurrency or real estate, it really comes from what I spoke about in the very first question of when we make decisions based on emotion rather than intelligence. So when we are trying to quote unquote, what's called time, the market, meaning you get into this herd mentality of the market's going up, everyone's talking about how great the economy is. Everyone's making all this money. It's become really popular. Oh my God, I'm going to buy this stock. Oh my God, I'm going to buy this thing. And then it crashes or it re corrects, or it doesn't do anything.

Or there's just a slight downturn. Like only, only maybe buy a couple of percent. And then what happens is that same buyer will freak out because they're so worried about losing money and emotions, get the better of them. And then they sell and they've obviously not made any money or sometimes they've lost it. And then what happens is they miss out on the gain that happens when the market recorrect next week or when the market kind of keeps going up. But when you try to time the market and try and guess when the best time is to buy that's when things fall apart, because you're not looking at the bigger picture, you're not looking at your longterm goals, what you want investments for. And you're trying to essentially speculate. And that game will just, it can never be won in short. And like I said, in the very beginning, you need to look at this as a longterm investment, really inherently investing is kind of boring.

Like the goal is to have it there, to create financial independence and create financial freedom so that you have enough money to live off and never have to worry about it again. And investments can do that, but not when you have such a laser-focus view of what's happening every single hour of every single day, what's happening in the news. You know what people are saying, what uncle Bob said, what my friend said, they think I shouldn't buy that doesn't work. You need to invest in a way that suits you and your risk and your goals essentially. So timing the market is one of the biggest killers when it comes to new investors, because often it can mean some really bad experiences. And that kind of leaves this lingering after effect of fear and worry and doubt, and thinking that every investment moving forward is going to play out exactly how it did before.

And that's just not the case, but it can be with people that have tried before without having any knowledge or information or how to go about it and how to do it in the right way that especially suits you. Alright, so they're the top four and then the last kind of two, and they come, they come as a pair. They always come together. And it's probably the top question in your mind. So it is how do I actually invest? And what do I invest in those two questions, really dominate, I think, thought patterns for every new investor. And they certainly dominate conversations that the first thing or the last thing, or at least the most often thing that I am asked. And really, I can't tell you on a podcast because there's not a short answer and it is individual. So that is kind of why I created my stock market investing bootcamp program.

And it really answers well, all of those questions that I've just run through, but particularly the what and how and how to do it in a way that suits you suits how much risk you're willing to tolerate and suits the goals and your objectives that you actually have about your future. Like, what do you want to invest for? Because if you don't have a why, then it's pointless, right? Like, is it because you want to retire 20 years earlier? Is it because you want to grow your stock portfolio and then eventually buy a house? Is it because you want to travel around the world for a year and you want to be able to do that worry free. So everyone's why is different. And that's a good thing because it means that you can invest in a way that suits you and in a way that works for you long term.

And if you want to know more, then coming out and chat with me, I can tell you a lot more about it. And probably even more questions that you may have. And you can do that by finding me in Instagram at ms. Wealthy official, uh, you can also find me on Facebook, uh, and booking a chat with me and we can go through all of your questions. You can also contact me, like I said, via the anchor app and ask questions there. It means I can feature our future questions and answer them for you and for other women that I'm sure probably have the same question they need answered. So do that via the anchor app. And honestly it brings me a lot of joy and I love receiving them. So please ask a way, you know, I told you the story about how I didn't use to ask questions. I think a lot of us have been in that same situation. A lot of us have stopped ourselves or thought that that stupid question was stupid, but it doesn't help us unless we ask we can't move forward. Right. So I hope that you do, uh, and I can certainly feature those questions in upcoming episodes. All right, go ahead. Just have a beautiful day and I'll see you in episode three,