In one of my earlier posts in this series, I alluded to the fact that I commenced this journey during the first national lock down of the 2020 pandemic; a period which most people described as weird, unprecedented times. With lock downs looming again (since September, 2020 still), across different towns (some already in lockdown) and a risk of another national lock down, this is now looking like our new normal! I wonder whether the world we live in would be full or partial lockdown during the cold months and partial (fearful, cautious and masked) movements, during the warmer months. A new way of living is upon us it would seem!
Irrespective, as long as we are alive, we’ve got to keep living. Living, I have come to realise (albeit a little late in my life) is being able to choose what I spend my time doing, which requires financial freedom! How one gets to that is likely to change over the years with the new way of living, but for now the old way still seems to work: get rid of debt, save, invest and make your money work for you.
In order for money to work for you, it needs to be generating some return (the higher the better of course), and this is the journey I am on – finding how to make my money generate a return for me rather than having to spend my time working in order to generate a return, in effect free up my time to do what I choose to do with it.
As per my last post, below options are some suggestions on how to make that happen.
In my quest, I came across investing in forex, which perhaps sits within the paper section of the above depiction. The person who introduced me to it, said they had subscribed to an investment company who shared trading ideas daily and based on the ideas they had made an average return of about 10% per month, and of course with compound interest, it had made them a lot of money overall. Investing in FOREX was a new area for me and I wasn’t particularly interested in it, but the idea of just placing one trade a day and letting the money do its thing, appealed to me – passively earning income I thought! So I decided to try it out with £500 and see how it goes; and it ended up not being one trade per day, but several and rather than making a return, I was losing money fast, and within the space of a month, I had lost about 25% of my initial investment. I imagine part of the reason for this was that the pandemic had caused the markets to become very erratic and unpredictable!
The person who introduced me to it then said they were terminating their subscription with the investment company and would be deciding on which trades to place themselves, having invested in training on trading FOREX. They apologised for the experience the returns not being as they had told us, but the information they had shared was on the basis of their experience prior to the current results. That for me was the deciding factor, it wasn’t a particular area of interest for me, I was losing money and the person who introduced me was bowing out… so I decided to cut my losses! By the time I eventually bowed out, the losses had continued and I had lost about 30% of my initial investment
My loss, I deemed as the cost I had to pay to learn that investing in forex was definitely not for me! I started out thinking I was in it for the long haul and I imagine that if it was an investment vehicle I was interested in, even with the losses suffered, I would have done more research, dug my heels in and figured out how I could make it work, but of course as it didn’t really appeal to me, nor was I interested in putting the time in to learn, it was best for me to bow out.
I came across the above post as I was typing up this blog and it gives me comfort and makes me feel that I am on the right path! I just have to find what works for me and then keep at it. Forex happens to be one of the many investment vehicles out there, but is definitely not for me; my plan is to diversify and put a certain percentage in different investment vehicles.
I hugely believe in diversifying rather than focusing on one investment vehicle. Yes you learn a lot, by focusing on one area and the returns could be great (after any losses suffered which generates learnings and what not to do), but given the global pandemic and the uncertainties that come with it, my opinion (and preference ) is that it is best to diversify given that all investment vehicles are not behaving in their usual manners! So hopefully, losses in one area would be offset elsewhere! This might be an age thing as well, given that any major losses suffered at my age might be much more difficult to recoup, which makes my risk appetite lower than it might have been years ago.
I have had previous experience investing in shares over the years, but never in U.K. (only because I didn’t know how to). This and investing in metals (which shouldn’t be surprising, given my previous history with buying and selling gold, silver and semi-precious stones) are areas of interest and I’d be sharing my experience with these investment vehicles.
Once again, I would encourage older women like me, approaching or who’ve already hit the golden age, to get going with setting up how the much later years would be financed. It is never too late to start and nothing will change unless you take action, so get rid of the fear and worry and TAKE ACTION NOW. As mentioned in an earlier post, for us Africans, let’s not expect that our children will take care of us the way we did our parents. It would be a very tough pill to swallow and a rude awakening come too late, if they don’t (and it is too much to put on them in the world we live in today) and personally, I don’t think the pension will go that far, so the time to set up that additional income stream is NOW!
For the younger ones, your time is NOW; you have the years ahead of you to try your hands at different things, to fall and pick yourself up/start again. So get out there and go DO IT; don’t leave it late like I have.
Let’s all get going with planting that seed that will yield future benefits; we just have to each find what we are comfortable with and works best for us.
📝 Originally shared under my first blog, bitalks; part of the journey that shaped Life’s Riches.