How to Build Wealth with Micro-Investing: A Step-by-Step Guide

Bryce: [00:01:11] Welcome to get started investing in this podcast, we cover all the basics that you need to start your investing journey. We unpack all the jargon and confusing bits here, your investing stories with the goal of making investing less intimidating. And along the way, we like to have a bit of fun. My name is Bryce and as always, I'm joined by my Equity Mates Ren. How are you going? [00:01:30][19.4]

Alec: [00:01:30] I'm good Bryce. I'm pumped for another episode of Get Started Investing feed. Yes, it's been, it's been busy weeks in the market. A lot of noise out there. Yes. But we're not going to talk about that noise. No, because that's we don't have an official policy on it. But maybe it's a time for another official policy. Yeah. Yeah. Look, sometimes we like to talk about the noise, but, you know, especially on this podcast, but even on our main Equity Mates podcast, it's all about long term investing. It's about it is, you know, doing something now that will pay off in 10 or 20 years. Yes. The changes in bond yields or Apple falling two percent overnight isn't going to matter in twenty years. [00:02:08][37.7]

Bryce: [00:02:08] No. So, as always, will be focussing on one fundamental topic. And in this episode, we're going to be focussing on micro investing. [00:02:16][7.8]

Alec: [00:02:17] Yes, yes. [00:02:18][0.7]

Bryce: [00:02:18] Ren micro investing, it's it's the talk of the town in a lot of the Get Started Investing feed community. Yeah. And it's something that we didn't actually address in detail in our twelve part series. [00:03:44][85.9]

Alec: [00:03:44] No, no. Which was a bit of an oversight by us. We were so keen to get into the main part of investing that we did skip over this a little bit. But look, we've talked about it on the main show. A lot of people in the Equity Mates community use some of these apps, but we want to do a sort of one on one episode. So how is this going to work? We're going to talk about what micro investing is. We're going to talk about some of the reasons you would do it, some of the benefits, some of the risks. Talk about what you're actually investing in. And then there's been a few updates in the micro investing world lately. There's, you know, obviously some companies, some publicly listed that are trying hard to win your Dollars. And so we'll talk about what the landscape is looking like now and what some of those recent changes are [00:04:29][45.0]

Bryce: [00:04:30] and finish with the community question that is conveniently related to micro investing. [00:04:35][4.6]

Alec: [00:04:35] And we'll try and do it all in twenty minutes. Yes, let's kick it off at the beginning. Bryce. Yes. What is micro investing? [00:04:42][7.0]

Bryce: [00:04:43] Micro investing is a form of investing where you can invest very, very small micro amounts, very small, tiny amounts through through an investing platform that then they take a pool of money from many, many other investors who have also put in tiny amounts. And they'll invest that into a share based investments or across a different number of assets into a portfolio that they have created themselves. [00:05:08][25.2]

Alec: [00:05:09] Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, quite quite simply, investing traditionally and I mean traditionally is in like, what? Ten years ago there was it was a least you had you had to invest at least five hundred dollars. That was the absolute minimum when we sort of started investing and probably, [00:05:25][16.8]

Bryce: [00:05:26] I think even more back [00:05:27][0.8]

Alec: [00:05:27] in the day. Yeah, I was going to say ten years before that, you know, if you had to go through a full service broker, you were talking thousands of dollars to start investing. And so investing was inaccessible for a lot of people, especially, you know, students or people early in their career or people who didn't have a lot of disposable income because you had to save for so long to get that that threshold amount kind of like property today. You got to save and save and save. And so micro investing has been created to solve that problem by taking everyone's small amounts of money, pulling them together and investing them together. Yeah. And so it's a great way to get started investing. It is the name of the podcast we're going to be talking about. [00:06:03][36.4]

Bryce: [00:06:03] It is you can forget the idea that you don't have enough money to start investing when it when it comes to. Macro investing as as will soon touch on, you don't need five hundred dollars, you only need a matter of seconds. [00:06:16][12.2]

Alec: [00:06:16] Well, let's touch on it now. What is the absolute minimum I need to start investing? [00:06:19][3.4]

Bryce: [00:06:21] Well, it depends on the platform. But for example, space ship, I think is it's a matter of cents now. It was five dollars. Same with raise a matter of cents without going into actual technical details. But it'll round up or take cents from a purchase that you've made. And then once it's pulled enough money, maybe five dollars or so, it'll then put it into your investment fund. So something like Comsec Pocket is a minimum of 50. But when we're talking comparatively to the 500 that it used to be, you know, you can really get started with cents in Dollars. [00:06:56][35.5]

Alec: [00:06:56] Now, I think the answer is less than a dollar. Yes. [00:06:58][1.9]

Bryce: [00:07:00] So some of the benefits of micro investing and I think for me, Ren one of the major ones is that you actually don't need to know a lot, if at all, anything about investing to get started. [00:07:13][12.7]

Alec: [00:07:14] Yeah, don't don't love that as the first benefit if I'm on it. [00:07:17][3.0]

Bryce: [00:07:17] Oh, that's fine. But for me, because this is a gateway drug to to the markets, I think [00:07:22][5.4]

Alec: [00:07:23] this is Bryce hanging out at universities trying to get people. [00:07:27][3.5]

Bryce: [00:07:29] The reason I say that is because you can set it up just like a savings account, really, and have money, just drip feed into these apps. And the apps are set up in a way, you know, that are really accessible and present information to you that you don't really need to understand the ins and outs of individual stocks. You don't really need to understand what an ETF is. It'll start just feeding your information and you can get into the markets. And that's why I say it's a gateway drug. [00:07:56][27.1]

Alec: [00:07:56] Yeah, yeah. The point of clarification, we always think you should know what you're investing in just because, you know, you're putting your money into it. So you should know something, [00:08:09][12.8]

Bryce: [00:08:10] but you don't have to have done a bunch of research and understand again, [00:08:14][3.8]

Alec: [00:08:16] you don't mind if I sit comfortably and say Equity Mates are just telling people, just chuck your money in whatever you get out of the box because it's the first [00:08:25][8.9]

Bryce: [00:08:25] thing in the book. [00:08:26][0.5]

Alec: [00:08:27] No, no, no. I in fact, I wrote this section. You know, I think the way when we talk about learning in, you know, in most things in life, you you do a whole bunch of study and then you qualified and then you do the thing, you know, you want to be a lawyer, you study for five years and then you're a lawyer. And the thing about investing is learning. What doing is, is so much more effective because you're engaged, you're learning as you're doing. You're not just trying to read books and watch YouTube videos about something you don't know much about. And so micro investing is a great way to just dip that the smallest of your toes in the water and then start to learn by doing still know what you're putting your money and still do some upfront research. But yeah, you start putting a few cents in, you see how the market moves. You start to understand what that money is going towards and then you learn by doing. [00:09:21][54.6]

Bryce: [00:09:22] Mm hmm. Which is, I guess a number of you've touched on a number of the other benefits being that I think these are a great way to then give you confidence to take a further step and start building out your own portfolio. A lot of people use micro investing apps as a way of building, you know, a few thousand dollars, and then often they'll take that and then start applying it in their own way in the market. So, yeah, taking that sort of next step through micro investing, UPSs is certainly one of the benefits. [00:09:52][30.9]

Alec: [00:09:53] So another one that I particularly like is how it's all automated. Well, a lot of them can be automated. So raise, for example, and none of this is sponsored. We're not we should have said this at the front, but now we're not advocating any particular app here. We're going to touch on some will probably use some as examples more than the others. But the long and the short of it is there are plenty of options out there for you to invest in that all do similar things. So just to use race as an example, you know, every time you spend money, it can round that amount up and invest that in the market. So you don't have to make the conscious choice of having a separate, you know, savings account for your investing money and transferring it to your brokerage and then deciding what to buy. It can just be an automated thing that you don't have to think about. [00:10:41][47.6]

Bryce: [00:10:41] Yeah, which for me is feeds into another benefit of taking emotion out of investing. We know the benefits of not trying to time the market, of not trying to sell in and out to make profits and avoid losses. We know the benefit of keeping your money in there and letting it compound over a long period of time. And if you do automate, you know, as you just said, Ren do automate the process, then you really taking out that emotional side of things. So a very important thing to consider, [00:11:11][29.5]

Alec: [00:11:12] and if Facebook has taught us anything, emotion leads to engagement. So us taking the emotion out of investing is against our interest, but it is definitely a better way to invest. Yes. [00:11:22][10.6]

Bryce: [00:11:23] Yeah. And finally, Ren, I think we did talk about dollar cost averaging in our fundamentals. And just to recap, that's where you put the same amount of money into the market over a consistent period of time to really even out the highs and lows of your purchasing price. And this is what investing through a micro investing app allows you to do. You can set up recurring payments to say, I want to put in five dollars a week and it'll just plug away. So in essence, that is dollar cost averaging. [00:11:53][30.7]

Alec: [00:11:54] Yeah, yeah. So I think that really covers the benefits. I think people get the point. I mean, there are other things that are good about it. You know, it's not just you're not just investing in Australia. You can invest overseas. You can invest in certain themes that you might like, you know, tech or sustainability and stuff like that. But yeah, I think we've Covid Covid the benefits. So let's get a bit negative. What are some of the risks? So what if people like this idea, if people are thinking, all right, 10 minutes into this episode, the boys are selling me on the idea of micro investing. What are some things that people should be aware of? [00:12:30][36.6]

Bryce: [00:12:31] Yeah, for me, firstly, the fees must consider the fees. So if you are investing very small amounts of money in the sense and sort of low Dollars, if you're also paying a dollar fifty a month in in fees, in a maintenance fee, or they throw in two Dollars in brokerage for every time you buy, you definitely need to consider how much you're paying in brokerage fees relative to how much you're putting in, because we know that fees over a long period of time eat away at your returns. [00:12:59][28.6]

Alec: [00:13:00] Yeah. So let's. You know, to be very clear about that, because a dollar probably doesn't sound like a lot in fees, but let's say you're rounding up your purchases and over the course of a month, you've got seven dollars in. I've picked a very difficult number to do the maths on. So let's let's change. Let's say you've got ten dollars that's gone into your account and it's a dollar fifty in phase. That's 15 percent fees. Yes. So we've lost 15 percent of your money, which [00:13:28][27.6]

Bryce: [00:13:28] is incredibly high. [00:13:29][0.7]

Alec: [00:13:29] Yeah. Which is stupidly hard. Yeah. Yeah. So if if the if the fee is a fixed number and all these fees are available on the website, if a fee is a fixed number, you want to make sure you're putting enough money in to make it a small percentage of the amount you're investing. Yeah. [00:13:47][17.9]

Bryce: [00:13:48] And so fees come in different forms. You have brokerage fees which for example, comes back pocket. They charge to Dollars. Every time you make a purchase, then you have account fees and maintenance fees. Now these are usually put on by the provider such as raise, for example, rather than pay. Every time you buy in, they'll just charge you a flat fee each month. But again, be wary that you're putting enough in to make that worthwhile. [00:14:15][27.5]

Alec: [00:14:16] And can I just say, we've spoken to some like FinTech and we've had people ask us the question like, you know what what fees, what I'd rather be paying like or, you know, we think that this fee is better than that fee to charge customers as an investor. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the fees are cold just it just matters how much money they're taking from you at the end of the day. So if you're getting charged brokerage fees every time it buys, if you're getting charged account maintenance fees, if you're getting charged, whatever, deposit fees, just think about how much money you're going to put in over the course of, say, a month and how much money they're going to take from you and add all the different fees up or compare it on an apples to apples basis of like total money they're taking, because whatever it's called, at the end of the day, it's the same effect. [00:15:03][47.1]

Bryce: [00:15:04] Another thing to be aware of, and this is not necessarily a risk because there is nothing wrong with what I'm about to say, but you need to be aware that if you're going to be investing in one of these macro investing apps or into ETFs, you will be most likely getting the market return. Nothing wrong with there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting a market return. But if you think you're going to be putting your money in and 10 times in your money over a month or two, then that's just not going to happen because these are set up to give you diversified exposure to many different markets and assets around the world. So that's just something to be aware of. [00:15:43][38.9]

Alec: [00:15:44] And also, if if you think you like, you know, Bryce Leske, the retail whisperer, or like, you know, some day day trader extraordinaire, these things don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can have a micro investing account and then also have your you know, I'm going to beat the market account with another broker or something and invest yourself. So everything that we say throughout this podcast or all our other podcast, everything we've learnt is that it's really hard to beat the market, No. One consistently over a long period of time. And number two, earning the market average returns over a long period of time compounds into serious wealth. Yeah, yeah. [00:16:25][41.2]

Bryce: [00:16:26] Finally, again, these are not like a full online broker platform where you'll be able to choose from the two and a half thousand stocks on the ASX or the three and a half thousand ETFs over in the United States. These apps will give you a very finite amount of options when it comes to what you can invest in. So just be aware of that as well. The options are limited, not to say that they're bad options or anything like that. They are designed to give you broad exposure. But if you want to be buying Afterpay and Zipp and those sorts of individual stocks, market investing apps are not the place to do that. [00:17:01][34.7]

Alec: [00:17:01] Yeah, and look, that's one because, you know, it's it's difficult to to do that with such small amounts of money. But secondly, it's deliberate because investing can often feel overwhelming and confusing and simplifying the choice makes it more accessible in an easier way to start. So to give an example of that Comsec pocket, they have seven investing choices and they're different themes. So it's like a technology theme, a sustainability theme, a few others, which I can't remember. And basically you whatever theme you invest in, they go in and invest in a bunch of companies through an ETF that tracks that thing. Yeah. Um, so yeah, you're right. You can't you can't buy individual stocks in most cases, which we'll get to in a second. But yeah, it in some ways that's a drawback, but in other ways it's maybe a good thing to get people started. [00:17:55][53.4]

Bryce: [00:17:56] So before we have a look at what we will be investing in, we'll just hear from our sponsors. Ren you are all about getting. Fit, you've bought the garment, you bought the golf membership at the gym membership, and you're on the mind muscles and even in lockdown, last year, you bought those resistance bands of Instagram that from memory didn't even come. [00:18:15][19.4]

Alec: [00:18:16] No, look, they didn't come, but all of that effort really was cancelled out by the numerous menu log orders that were a real staple of my lockdown experience. [00:18:25][9.5]

Bryce: [00:19:12] OK, so very briefly, because this is dependent on which platform you're using, but we've spoken a lot about, you know, getting broad exposure to a number of different stocks and asset classes through these apps. So we've pulled out a portfolio from rise to give you an idea of what might actually be under the hood when it comes to putting your money in. And we're not going to go down in terms of the percentages here. We'll just kind of talk through the different types of assets. So as we mentioned, race will take a lot of people's money and then invested into a diversified portfolio. And in this example, that portfolio consists of cash, which is the Australian dollar, large Australian companies. So the likes of BHP, Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, you name it. Then there's also some large Asian companies like Samsung, Hyundai, Tencent, large European companies and then large US companies as well as some government bonds. Now, don't freak out if you're unaware of what bonds are or found some of that terminology confusing, but it just gives you a bit of an idea that when you are investing through these apps, you are really getting, in some instances, a pretty broad exposure to a lot of the big companies around the world. [00:20:33][81.2]

Alec: [00:20:33] What which portfolio is that [00:20:35][1.5]

Bryce: [00:20:36] that that is? I cannot remember, to be honest, but the way that writers do their portfolios is from a moderate to like very aggressive. And so they just change the mix of those. So you might have a very like a moderate or conservative that is more weighted towards government bonds or cash. And then it goes up. They have also introduced another one called Saphire, which has Bitcoin in it as well. [00:21:02][25.7]

Alec: [00:21:02] Right. Okay. No, is it called Emerald? [00:21:04][1.8]

Bryce: [00:21:05] I think it's Sapphire. Sapphire is our Bitcoin portfolio. [00:21:09][4.1]

Alec: [00:21:10] Okay, there you go. [00:21:11][0.8]

Bryce: [00:21:12] Emerald, I think, is their sustainability. One, I could be wrong [00:21:16][4.3]

Alec: [00:21:16] or some market. I probably got pyromancer to to name those. Yeah. So let's talk about your options. I think, um, because, you know, we've sort of talked about the pros and cons. We've talked about what it is. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are like, we get it. We've been micro investing for a while and others who are now interested. So I'm interested. What are my options and do you have a Bryce Leskie recommendation? [00:21:41][24.7]

Bryce: [00:21:43] So there's really only three major competitors in Australia and that is raise, as we've spoken about, and they offer six diversified portfolios. They also have the Emerald, which you spoke about, Ren, which is their sustainability option, and they have the sapphire, which is the Bitcoin option. And when I say Bitcoin option, you're only allowed up to five percent exposure, but it's still gives you exposure. Space ship Voyager is another they have three portfolios that you can drip feed into, but then comes back pocket is also in this space as they allow fractional buying and at low Dollars. So they have seven investment options, as you said, Ren. But they are all ETF options that are on offer. Portfolios like Rice and Spaceship Two. [00:22:33][49.9]

Alec: [00:22:34] There's one more. Well, there's a couple more. And this is always controversial. Are they micro investing apps? So like, for example, steak you can invest from as little as. Do you know what the minimum is, 10 bucks? Yeah, so that's lower than Comsec Pocket. I've actually asked steak at one point do they want to be grouped in with these micro investing ups? And they've said no. So they probably don't like me talking about it now. But it's funny because, like, what we're finding is there are these apps that market themselves as micro investing apps, but then brokers are finding ways to lower their minimums as well. So that's just another thing to kind of keep an eye on. Like you might actually find a broker where you can invest from, you know, less than a Comsec pocket. [00:23:19][45.4]

Bryce: [00:23:19] Yeah, yeah. For our international listeners, ACoNs and Robin Hood, obviously the two big hitters in the USA and wealth, simple and wealth are equally as big over in the U.K. So check them out if you're interested. So we did say we're going to finish with a community question Ren. But there's an update that race has released. I'm honestly not sure when it was, but I've just come across it. So I would like to update the community on that. Traditionally, they only allowed for you to invest in the portfolios that they constructed as we went through previously, and you could choose your level of aggressiveness. Do I want a conservative portfolio or an aggressive? Now, though, they are allowing you to build your own portfolio using a selection of ETFs and then assigning the percentage of your money to go into each ETF or weighting. [00:24:11][51.9]

Alec: [00:24:12] How many ETFs? [00:24:13][0.4]

Bryce: [00:24:14] When I had a play, I managed to get up to five. OK, so it's a pretty good idea because then what happens is you then create your own portfolio and drip drip feeds into that. [00:24:26][11.9]

Alec: [00:24:26] That is cool. That's that's good from right. Yeah. Nice, right. I mean I guess you could probably do the same with Comsec Pocket of the seven. You could, [00:24:34][7.7]

Bryce: [00:24:35] but what you can't do is so for RES I'll say I'm going to put five dollars in every month and it'll split across all five ETFs. Comsec pocket you'll say I put five in every month, but it'll only go to one eight. Yeah. [00:24:46][11.0]

Alec: [00:24:46] So that is truly dollar cost averaging. Truly cauterising. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Good on your eyes. Maybe that's why stockpot 80 percent earlier this year. Good on your [00:24:57][10.2]

Bryce: [00:24:57] eyes. Now we will be closing out with a question that has come in on our speek pipe. If you do want to hit us up with a question, you can do so on equitymates.com/contact and leave us a voice message. And here is one from Christian. [00:25:11][13.8]

Christian: [00:25:12] Hey guys, got a quick question for you. My name's Christian. Just been into the Get Started Investing feed podcast, which has been super helpful. By the way. My question is in relation to, you know, making trades every time you get a new paycheque, is it a good idea to, you know, just continually place new trade every time you get that paycheque to put it into your investment account? Or would it be better to over three months or four months, then place a trade at each of those kind of intervals rather than on a monthly basis because you'd be cutting more Bryce reach that way? So, yeah, any clarification on that would be really helpful. Thanks. [00:25:51][39.2]

Alec: [00:25:52] So this is a great question. I like this one. Thanks for sending it in. Christian, what's your what are your thoughts? [00:25:57][5.2]

Bryce: [00:25:58] Well, I mean, we've just spoken about micro investing and if you do want to be investing every time a paycheque comes in, then this is a great way to be doing it. For me, though, more broadly, I'm always putting money aside to invest every paycheque. I think for me you need to be careful about the amount that you're investing versus your brokerage. Yeah, yeah. If you're putting away one hundred dollars every week or every time you're paid, but you're paying twenty bucks in brokerage, you're losing out. Yeah. So that's probably my main comment to that. [00:26:29][31.0]

Alec: [00:26:29] So we talk about a rule of thumb and it is literally just a rule of thumb. But we like to keep our brokerage cost at one percent of our trade. Speaking personally, what I do is I get paid fortnightly now, which is great. I used to get paid monthly, hated it and I have I like a separate account set up with CommBank. I use where I just transfer what I don't think I'm going to need to spend into it. And when that gets to a certain amount, I transferred into my brokerage account, or if I'm confident I won't need to spend it for the month, I transfer it straight into my brokerage account. So then it's there and I can't touch it. But that doesn't mean I'm then going in and buying stuff as soon as the money hits the account. You know, I've got to have enough in there where it's where it's it's I'm not paying a stupid amount in fees. Yeah. So that's my process. Different strokes for different folks. But I think, you know, Christian is asking the right question. Like you don't want to be exposed to unnecessary costs. [00:27:32][62.4]

Bryce: [00:27:32] Yeah, but also, can I encourage everyone? Things are moving fast in this space at the moment when it comes to brokers, there is a lot of new entrants coming to the market just because you with one broker and you have been for a number of years, don't think that you can't move brokers. There are plenty of [00:27:49][17.2]

Alec: [00:27:50] options that [00:27:51][1.1]

Bryce: [00:27:51] allow you to invest in the market at incredibly low cost. And this is not sponsored, but for example, superhero charge zero dollars on ETFs. So you could literally buy every time you get paid. [00:28:02][11.6]

Alec: [00:28:03] That's actually a really good point. So it is no wonder you host an investing fund. So actually, yeah, if you wanted to just purely dollar cost averaging into ETFs, that's exactly what you should be doing. Yeah. Again, not sponsor. [00:28:13][10.5]

Bryce: [00:28:14] Yeah. Not sponsorship, but if you're paying eight or nine point with Comsec or whatever it may be, please have a look at the other options that are out there because it's only getting cheaper and cheaper. So yeah, that would be my word. [00:28:26][12.2]

Alec: [00:28:26] We should we should say not sponsored but previously sponsored. Previously sponsored. Yeah. Yeah. And look, that they're not the only ones who are going to be there's a race to the bottom in brokerage. Yeah. Yeah. So you're right. Keep an eye out because find ways to reduce your fees and then this question is no longer relevant. But it was a good question [00:28:45][19.0]

Bryce: [00:28:45] because the question we have had a number of other questions come in which will address over the coming weeks. So please do keep sending them in. But Ren, that brings us to the end of an episode for Get Started Investing feed. If you would like more information, head to our website, Equity Mates dot com. As I said, we do have the email as well that goes out each week and it is usually based on the podcast episode that we have discussed. So next week, well, today an email would have gone out on macro investing. We've got a [00:29:15][29.3]

Alec: [00:29:15] firehose of content for podcasts, three emails, a TV show. You'll be sick of us if you can see them at all. [00:29:22][7.7]

Bryce: [00:29:24] You're right. Well, head over to Equity Mates dot com to find out information on all of our firehose of information. But otherwise, Ren always good to chat and we'll speak next week. [00:29:34][9.5]

Alec: [00:29:34] Sounds good. [00:29:34][0.3]

Speaker 3: [00:29:35] This podcast proudly brought to you by Equity Mates Media. Always remember all information contained in this podcast is for education and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for national financial label or tax advice. The host of Equity Mates and not financial professionals. And I'm not aware of your personal financial circumstances before making any financial decisions, you should read the product disclosure statement and if necessary, consult a licenced financial professional. More information here to our disclaimer page, where you can find resources to search for a registered financial professional. You. [00:29:35][0.0]

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