Why my one piece of advice on getting started with investing is meetinvest

A couple of weeks back, I stumbled upon an article on The Telegraph that featured a fintech start-up that helps ordinary people ‘invest like Warren Buffett’ called meetinvest. Being the curious cat that I am (and how it could potentially benefit all of you, my dear readers), I’ve signed up on the platform and would like to share with you my thoughts (and love) for this interesting platform that promises to do so much for your personal finance.

Before shedding light on meetinvest, the first thing I would like you to think about (and do!) is to set aside an amount to invest. If you are starting with zero savings, my suggestion for you would be to take a closer look into your current monthly expenses, as more likely than not, the answer lies within! Be honest with yourself and identify areas in which you could reduce expenses on; these could be as simple as eating at one less restaurant per month, reducing your cable bill expenses or even buying a piece or two less of clothing.

While you may think that these small amounts will not make much of a difference, think again. Thanks to the magic of compound interest, a £50 saved every month for 35 years at an average of 8% interest will give you earnings of over £111,500! So get moving! Do it!

Many of you have previously asked me on how to get started with investing as it always seems daunting; citing reasons such as “I don’t know how to”, “I don’t have enough money” or a “I just can’t get started”. To which I now say: “Simply start with meetinvest”! It is an online platform that is specially tailored for newbie to advanced investors of all types. Don’t be put off by having to register an account with them as they do not collect personal data and have their servers strategically placed in Switzerland so as to avoid data ‘hacks’ from you-know-who. What’s more, it’s free!

Now to the fun part, if you haven’t already done so, here’s a quick peek inside meetinvest:

Upon a quick registration, you’ll be invited to choose at least two interests of yours in order to provide you with relevant information tailored for you. After selecting your interests, your personal profile feed then gets populated with posts from groups and people who share similar investing interest as yourself.

 

On the “Insights” tab, you can find out more about successful investors’ strategies, their approach to investing and success formulas. You can learn and pick the one you think fits your personality and investment style, risk tolerance and goals.

Under the “How” section, you’ll get to learn more about the basics of investing, asset allocation, diversification or profit protection amongst others. It is clear that meetinvest has consciously worded content to be simple and easy to understand. It is easy to navigate through their tutorials step by step, which is great in helping users better understand what investing is really about, without needing much prior knowledge on investments.

Not forgetting, you can also join an interest group to discuss further on common interests such as “How to Invest”, “Finance 2.0” or even create your own topics such as “Watches”, “Shoes”, “Bags” and the like (its limitless)! If commenting is not your thing, you can always follow others and (secretly) read their views on investing.

After you have read and digested the guides and information provided by meetinvest, it’s time to get practical! A key benefit of meetinvest is that they provide you with a unique stock-picking tool that you can utilize. If you would like to ‘invest like Warren Buffett’, all you need to do is to select his strategy (amongst many others), select the country or regional stocks that you are interested in, enter an amount that you have ready for investment, and create a basket!

meetinvest will then generate a list of stocks based on your settings, in which you may now download the listed stock portfolio, call your broker and invest! You can even choose to receive daily, weekly or monthly notifications from meetinvest to alert you on whether the listed stocks are ‘in’ or ‘out’, so that you can make adjustments on your purchased stocks accordingly. If you are not sure if the strategy you’ve chosen is the right choice, simply run another strategy that has better results, as suggested by meetinvest, directly from the same page.

 

Once you are happy and comfortable with the results, it is time to invest real money. But remember! The amount you invest each month should only come from your disposable income. Most importantly, make sure that you only invest money that you can afford, am prepared to lose, or do not need for the short or long term. Markets are unpredictable!

If your investments do go south, you’ll need to be patient and wait till the economic climate is better before cashing out. If you invest too much at the beginning, you may just find yourself needing that money and having to sell your invested stocks at a less than ideal time.

If you’re a person that cannot control you spending habits, consider setting up a direct debit account to invest a set amount every month or every quarter. This is a great way to let your money grow without interference. Trust me, after some time; you wouldn’t even notice that a part of your monthly salary has gone into your investment account!

I personally found the meetinvest platform delightful and have chosen to share it with you, as I believe it’ll answer the question that is most frequently asked from my readers which is on “How to get started with investing”.

I find the content to be easy to understand and the stock tool to be highly valuable. If you don’t believe me, check it out yourself! I would be happy to hear what you think about it so feel free to leave your comments below. If you’re serious about getting started with investing, take that chance and sign up on meetinvest! Don’t forget to tell your friends and say you’ve heard it from me first!