I’m not a great saver. In general, I’m a spender. But I want to become a decent saver so that that I can invest it and make a good pile of money before I retire and hopefully live well before that. Given my spending nature, for me, it’s about creating systems that take out the need for willpower and that make it easy for me to spend less and save more. Monzo, Marcus, and Moneybox help me do that. Monzo Monzo is a new bank account that’s mobile-only and aimed at young people. It has a cool bright pink card that when you tap it or use it, sends an instant update to your phone. So I know immediately when I buy a coffee or lunch. It literally tells me as soon as I tap my card on the reader. So how does Monzo help me save money? Two ways: …[Read More]
Money
How to automatically invest and dollar cost average with a Ray Dalio or David Swenson asset allocation using Hargreaves Lansdown
We know we should save and invest but how should we invest? We’ve seen from a previous article that we should dollar cost average to even out our entry price. But what should we invest in? I’m a big believer in following (scratch that, copying) the best. Who are the best asset managers over the long term? I’m going to talk about two: David Swensen, CIO of Yale University Endowment and Ray Dalio, co-CIO and founder of Bridgewater Associates, and look at the asset allocations that they use. What is an asset allocation? An asset allocation is how your asset classes within your portfolio are divided. An asset class is a type of asset, so one asset class could be stocks (equities), it could be bonds (fixed income), it could be property, gold or just straight cash. It could even be cryptocurrency :). So for many people, their major asset class is …[Read More]
How I bought my very first Ethereum cryptocurrency (for complete beginners)
In my last post, I wrote about how to buy bitcoins for a complete beginner. Since then, I’ve wanted to buy other cryptocurrencies to diversify my exposure to cryptocurrencies. I want a basket of cryptocurrencies. Next on the list is Ethereum. How to buy Ethereum Now this wasn’t as straightforward as buying Bitcoins, possibly because it’s a much younger coin. First up, like with Bitcoin, you need a wallet. Googling ‘best ethereum wallet’ doesn’t yield good results. Instead, go to the source again (as we did with Bitcoin). Go to Ethereum.org. Here, download the Wallet: Next, install it. This isn’t that straightforward, so here are two great videos showing you how to do so for Mac: Once you’ve installed and backed-up your wallet, it’s time to load it with Ethereum. Where to get Ethereum? Google will take you to Coinbase. Unfortunately, I had the same problems with Coinbase as I did …[Read More]
How I bought my very first bitcoins (for complete beginners)
The recent cyberhacks got me thinking about bitcoin. I also saw an old article on the brilliant Sprezzaturian website by Mikael Syding where he outlines becoming expert in a hot topic and consulting on that newfound knowledge (in this example, Bitcoin and Blockchain). I watched a few videos on what Bitcoin and Blockchain are: I looked at the price and historic prices were for Bitcoin: My usual self would have ploughed into this kind of hockey stick action. Luckily for me, it’s not that easy to buy the underlying assets. Let’s look at how to buy bitcoins. Bitcoin Wallet You need a Bitcoin wallet in which to store your Bitcoins. I looked on Google for best Bitcoin wallet and came to articles by 99 Bitcoin. This is a good website which recommended Coinbase. I checked out Coinbase and Xapo and leant towards Coinbase because it was an exchange (where I …[Read More]
What you can learn from I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
I read I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi before I read The Richest Man in Babylon (see previous post). However, I Will Teach You To Be Rich (IWT) can be taken as building on many of the principles in The Richest Man in Babylon (RMB). IWT is RMB for the 21st century. Summary IWT is split into 6 sections: Get out of debt Don’t save or invest until you’ve got out of debt. Interest rates on credit card debts far outweigh any possible gains from high-interest savings accounts or investments in equities or bonds. Sethi gives the reader scripts for negotiating lower credit card interest rates to help you pay off your debts faster. Set up no-fee, high-interest bank accounts This is harder to do now in the post-2008 low interest rate world. Still you can find no-fee accounts and accounts with more attractive rates. As …[Read More]