Today we kick off a new season which we’re calling Big Ideas. The thinking is that we’ll deal with some of the big, overarching principles of personal finance, and show you how to put them into practice.
Everything You Need To Know
- Definition – What do we mean by Businesses and Bricks: Shares and Property.
- Shares explained – tiny slice of a company.
- Property explained – Your home is not an investment.
- What about the others? Many other asset classes, notably bonds, gold, currency, commodities, infrastructure even crypto.
You can get by with just shares (a rocky ride), just property (illiquid and tax-inefficient) or can blend with the other stuff.
Everything You Need To Do
- Before investing, establish objectives – Timescale is important. Determine how involved you want to be in any investment you make.
- Determine risk profile – If a new investor, theory is one thing, but reality is another. New investors tend to over-estimate their tolerance for volatility.
- Remember tax wrappers – ISAs, Pensions and other wrappers and in lots of different forms.
- Use funds to diversify – Can hold many more shares through a fund than you can as an individual investor.
- Join The Property Hub – Good friends Rob Dix and Rob Bence have built an incredible business off the back of their podcast, but the community is brilliant if you’re a property investor or thinking about becoming one.
- Seek tax advice before investing in physical property – Worth paying a couple of hundred quid to a good, specialist accountant so that you don’t get caught out later.
