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Why You Should Start Investing in University

10th January 2019

investing university

The younger you start investing the better.

You can start investing even in university, you won’t lose all your money and it’s not complicated. It’s all those myths out there that make people uncertain about investing and scared to get started. 

I have met FAR TOO MANY 25+ year olds who wish they had started investing and learnt about money when they were young.

And so I would tell them: don’t worry, I’m on a mission to help current youngsters get started with investing, so they don’t end up having regrets like you. And here we are.

Now, if you’re someone who is horrified at the thought that I’m encouraging students and young people to start investing, I tell you to take a deep breath and read this post where I debunk 6 myths on investing.

Investing is part of the ‘adulting’ section of Financially Mint, which means that you should only start investing once you:

  1. Have a budget in place
  2. Are in the habit of saving 15% of your income
  3. Have money making skills

Once all that’s in place, you’re probably more financially educated than 99% of the population and are ready to put your money to work. Aka investing.

It’s totally normal to be scared of the word investing; when I went on the streets and interviewed students, they all flinched when I asked them if they invested, as if I were directly asking them to give me all their money. But that’s because the general population and financial institutions out there are telling us myths. The general population tells us that investing is risky, that you need a lot of money to get started, that it’s complicated, and that it’s only for experts. Well the truth is, these are all MYTHS. I debunk them in this post (check it out, seriously).

So now that you don’t believe these myths anymore, let me convince you as to why you should start investing 🤓

Starting now makes the difference of thousands of pounds

Ben and Jill are saving and investing money.

Ben starts at the age of 30. He invests £100 every month until the age of 60. Taking an average stock market return of 7%, he will have £116,945.26 on his 60th birthday. Not bad, Ben.

Jill decided to be smart and starts at the age of 20. She also invests £100 until reaching 60. BUT! At the age of 60, she accumulates a whooping £247,154.26.

That is nearly double what Ben has, simply because she started 10 years earlier.

And the funny thing is that if Ben started at 30 but invested £200 instead, he still wouldn’t have more money than Jill (quite a few thousand less).

This is the magic of compound interest. And that’s the simple reason you should start as soon as possible, because then you have more years under your belt. Even if it’s just £100, or even £50, that tiny effort can make a huge difference in the future.

investing university
Jill is acing it (see how it’s turning into a hockey stick graph?)

It’s better than saving

Saving is great. It’s a great way to get started with money management, it’s how you get started on your goals and see your money accumulating.

However, if I just saved £100 per month for 40 years, I would get… £48,000. Imagine that? Putting your hard earned money every day into a savings account for 40 years, and only getting £48,000?

We saw in the example above that Jill invested her £100/month for 40 years, and ended up with £247,154.26!!! That is insane.

And once again this shows you the power of compound interest. Start with saving, then invest it.

 

IT’S FREE MONEY

I spend 10 minutes a month managing investments. I could even spend 0 minutes if everything was direct debited and I was putting the same amount away every month.

I’ve written several guides to getting started, this one with 4 Steps to Get Started with Investing being the most relevant. But it takes about 30 min – 1 hour to set up your account, buy some index funds or ETFs, set up a direct debit and voila! You’re investing!

All you do is start with something like £100/month and watch your money literally grow under your nose. 0 monthly effort. Turns out trees with money on them do exist 💁🌴

 

Financial education

I always love telling the story of how an attendant at RBS bank suggest I open a Cash ISA (British tax advantaged account only for cash) with the bank. I looked at her a bit confused and said ‘Why would I want to open a cash ISA that offers a lame 0.5% interest rate when I can open a Stocks and Shares ISA and use the 7% of the stock market?’. She looked surprised and embarrassingly said I was right. WIN 💪

Although I was still a finance novice back then, that little bit of financial education had allowed me to make the right choice and open a Stocks and Shares ISA to get started with investing (obviously not with RBS 😉).

Although at the beginning investing can be a little overwhelming with all the misinformation out there and the huge myths and scams, once you read the right books, follow the right people and read the right information, you can’t go wrong. (check my resources page to find the right people to follow!). And if you want to try but don’t want to use real money yet, open a paper account with The Share Centre. Free, easy to start and you’ll get a feel of what an investment platform looks like. 

And once you are investing regularly, you will be practicing and learning more and more. You’ll understand the financial news a bit more, you’ll be confident you know what your money is doing, you’ll know your money is actually working for you and not just sitting there in a savings account. Powerful stuff. 🔥

So there you go, 4 reasons why you need to start investing in university/early twenties. Be Jill. Even if it’s just 100€/month, you can end up with a huge bucket of money at a later age. Money which you can then use to retire early, to buy a house, to have options. Check out my How to Get Started with Investing post and look out for some more investing posts coming out in the future 😎. Investing is one of the keys to achieving financial freedom, and every day that passes could be a day your money is compounding. Start as soon as you can.

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My name's Araminta and I'm freelance FinTech Copywriter.

I started Financially Mint to help other 20 something year olds learn about money and fix their finances early in life 💪

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Financially Mint is on another break! ☕ I will Financially Mint is on another break! ☕

I will be living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the next few months, and then hopefully heading to Australia. 
My plans for the next year:

I'm putting the career testing theory into practice. My next career test is working for an NGO here in Kuala Lumpur. This week will be my first week. I will be working with sex trafficking survivors and I've also been asked to do some financial education presentations to help the staff.

After that the plan is to move to Melbourne, Australia, and do my next career test: consulting. If that doesn't work out I will try another career test which may be more achievable: business development in a startup. Thanks to the amazing career books that I've read, I'm pretty confident I can get an interesting job. We'll see how it rolls. 🏀

How am I funding this? I'm very excited to say that I've managed to grow my part-time freelancing income to a full-time income that can sustain me in South East Asia (I would need to work full-time in Europe). I'm calling myself a 'Freelance FinTech Writer'. Rent is crazy cheap (like 300€/month) and it's literally cheaper to eat out than cook. I'm still able to save 15% of my income. 🎉🎉 The increase in clients and pay has been thanks to all the effort I put into Financially Mint, and to some crazy cold emailing and networking in the past few months. 
After some thought, I concluded that learning mark-up language (HTML + CSS) was a more efficient use of my time than writing blog posts and working on FM... so I am now taking a break to learn some basic coding and decide what to do next.

I will still be podcasting and taking part in the FI community on Twitter and everywhere else... so I'll still be seeing you around 😉

To our success 🎉🎉
Only 30% of jobs are posted online. 🙄 Let's sa Only 30% of jobs are posted online. 🙄

Let's say you've got a list of career paths to test. You've figured out a direction, you know which sector you want to work in and you've got some cool companies in mind.

But then what? How do you get an internship in the company you really want to work for? How do you get a job in that specific NGO? How do you get them to notice you? 🤔

In FM's latest post I share a strategy that I am still testing but seems to work - copied from a book titled 'Designing your Life' by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans:

The strategy: Conducting 'Life Design' Interviews. .
A Life Design Interview is basically meeting the person that has your 'dream career' for coffee. ☕

You find someone who is working at the company you want to work for, in the sector you want to work for or simply has a position you're interested in, and you reach out to them (LinkedIn helps). You ask about their story, their position, how they got to where they are and their advice to people starting out. 
This is what I've been doing for the past month in Edinburgh, and of the 40 people I contacted, I met 8 of them for coffee, my goal to simply learn about their story.

With an added bonus: Trust. ✅

Not only did I learn stuff about working in a startup, or as a content writer or working in an NGO, but I also built a trusted connection. It's those connections that help you find the hidden jobs, the dream careers and the best opportunities.

Check out FM's latest post for a proper run down on Life Design interviews. 💪 (Last week we organised the FI Europe podcast retreat! An amazing 4 days doing speeches, masterminds, debates, boat trips, beach and surfing. Post on this coming soon 🔥)
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#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #careerbuilding #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #fieurope #lifedesign #interviews
Investing in yourself now will return bucket loads Investing in yourself now will return bucket loads in the future. 🔮

I talk a lot about this on Financially Mint - how taking the time to build career capital and explore career paths will allow you to find a career of best personal fit, which will then make you the money you need.

But it is true that I am personally at the very start of this journey, and so can't offer many examples of this working. 🤷‍♀️ Well today, this changes as I interview the Financial Gladiator, who did exactly that.

He went to university to study business in Poland, and finished his masters in Australia. In the meantime, he was doing internships, making connections, building skills and beefing up his portfolio. 
He says it himself: ' I always looked to add experience and skills to my repertoire rather than dollars' 💸.
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7 internships later in several different countries and industries and a lot of hustling, moving around and learning about what career fitted him best, FG ended up in a job that paid him a six figure salary. This kept on snowballing, and in his early thirties he hit a salary of over $500,000. .
That goes to show how much investing in yourself can return in the future.
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$500,000 annual salary doesn't need to be your goal, but it still goes to show that you'll make the bulk of your money after investing in your own career. 📈

A great interview filled with actionable career advice and FG's complete story, check out FM's latest blog post! (Edinburgh castle 🔥)
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#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #studentmoney #studenthacks #studentlife #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #careerbuilding #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #work
Most of us don't know what we want to do in our tw Most of us don't know what we want to do in our twenties 🤷‍♀️. And that's absolutely normal.

But that's why we don't want to be committing to one thing - who know what you might want to do in 5 years? 🧐

Instead of committing, why not be exploring, investigating and testing career paths. But how can you do this cleverly without being a typical 'millennial-career-hopper'? By building career capital at the same time.

This means that every career test you do will help you build skills, connections and a more solid portfolio. If you have no idea where to start, here are some examples of jobs/activities that can help you build career capital:

1. Working for a growing organisation with a growing performance: this could be consulting, a startup - anywhere with a good mentor and team 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦
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2. Graduate studies - for those who want to work in research, a think tank, etc.
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3. Building a valuable and transferable skill - skills such as writing, programming, designing, data science, etc will always be useful in the future 💻
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4. Creating content - you don't always need a shiny piece of paper or a medal to show that you've done something. Creating your own thing can be just as useful.
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And much more amazing career advice... in FM's latest blog post 🤓
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(I’m running out of pictures to post so here’s one of a beautiful evening in Edinburgh) .
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#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #studentmoney #studenthacks #studentlife #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #peoplemanagement #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #work
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