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From Rookie to Investor: My First Investment Story | Summer Series

HOSTS Alec Renehan & Bryce Leske|11 January, 2022

Sponsored by Superhero

It’s easy to forget that we all started with that one first investment. In this episode, we’re hearing stories from four of our community members about how they started investing and why they continue to do so. We welcome back Natasha Etschmann (@tashinvests) to the show, as well as Maddie, Dylan and James, who share some great stories with Bryce and Alec. 

This summer, Superhero are partnering with Qantas to help you trade to the skies. 

Winner of Money Magazine’s Best of the Best award for the Cheapest Online Broker, Superhero allows you to invest in companies like Apple, Tesla and Spotify with $0 brokerage on U.S. shares and ETFs AND you can now earn Qantas points with Superhero. 

Visit superhero.com.au to learn more. Eligibility criteria, terms and conditions, and fees & charges apply. 

This episode contains sponsored content from Superhero.

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Bryce: [00:00:31] Welcome to the Get Started Investing feed summer series brought to you by superhero over six episodes, we're going to be hearing from members of both the Equity Mates and Superhero community and covering some of the biggest questions for anyone starting their investing journey. As always, I am joined by my equity buddy Ren. How are you going?

Alec: [00:00:48] I am very good, Bryce. Great to be with you for this summer series episode. You're probably on a golf course somewhere. No idea where I'll be. Hopefully far away from the office, but excited for this episode because again, we've taken one of the most common questions we get from the Equity Mates community through our dams over email in our discussion group, and we've gone to some influencers, some members of the Equity Mates community to ask him that question.

Bryce: [00:01:19] That's it. So this episode we're asking how or why did you get started investing and what is the story of your first investment? Some first investments have gone incredibly well. Others which we have spoken about on the show many times before. Black rains have not gone so well, but there's always a lesson in hearing the answer to this question. So Ren, I feel like we've spoken enough about the story of yours. 

Alec: [00:01:45] And it's a time, but more than enough. How out of the way,

Bryce: [00:01:49] if you would like to hear the story of our first investment investments and you've joined us for the first time? Do go back and listen to the start of the whole series where we go through our first investments in detail. But I think before we jump in, we must shout out to superhero because Superhero has proudly sponsored the summer series. They allow you to buy Aussie and US shares and ETFs with no monthly account fees, and you can now earn Qantas points with superheroes. So visit superhero dot com daddy use flash Qantas to learn more. Eligibility criteria, terms and conditions and fees and charges apply. So Ren we've got James Tosh from Tash invests money with Maddie and Dylan all coming up throughout this episode to share with us the story of their first investment and how and why they started investing. So let's get stuck in. So James is a 30 year old Army veteran who suffered a bad spinal injury during a training exercise, he was medically discharged from the army and later found his passion for investing around the time of the Covid crash. James has since been issued over 300 episodes of Equity Mates, and he's going to share some of his investing journey with us today. So James, pleasure to have you here at Get Started Investing feed. It's great to be here.

James: [00:03:07] Thanks for having me.

Alec: [00:03:08] I'm surprised you wanted to come in after listening to 300 episodes of us. Oh, I'd be pretty sick of us by now. Not at all.

Bryce: [00:03:17] So, James, we love to hear the story of people's first investments. There's obviously a lot we can learn from it. So are you able to share with us today the story of your first investment?

James: [00:03:27] Yeah. Well, my first significant investment was investing quite heavily in myself into the therapy that I needed to overcome some mental barriers that were actually preventing me from investing successfully. And that happens because when you get some trauma in your brain, your physical brain structure actually changes, and your amygdala, which is the brain centre for fear, becomes enlarged and an overactive. While at the same time, your prefrontal cortex, which is the brain centre for logic and reasoning, actually shrinks. So when the brain goes to make a decision, it costs so much access the logic and reasoning. And it's getting extra signals from the amygdala, which results in a lot of fear based decisions that are lacking in logic and reasoning coming out. I didn't grow up with many myths about investing, and despite knowing all the benefits, the benefits of it and how important it really is to invest properly, especially at such a young age, I was not able to do it very well because whenever I did have some extra money, I was not like my brain would always make excuses as to why the timing wasn't right or why I might need that money for something else. And then on the flip side of that, whenever it came to going on a holiday overseas or going on a bender or going on a road show, yeah, I would always justify why I didn't need that money and why I could spend it all. And if I had made some small investments, I would have no problem selling them to blow the money. So the first real significant investment was to sort of getting over that hurdle and getting my mindset right, which I could then make better life decisions in general, but also better financial decisions.

Bryce: [00:05:05] So then the flow on from that is to the actual investment into the stock market. Do you have a story of what your very first investment into that was?

James: [00:05:14] Yeah. Well, my very first investment was quite boring and sensible a long, long time ago after I did have my injury and I was in hospital for quite some time. I had all my pay while still getting paid, was in hospital and couldn't spend any of the money. So I bought some Telstra shares after reading about them in the paper and they were looking pretty good. But in more recent times, actually after I looked at my super and I realised that I only had one third of the average super for my age group due to being unable to work a lot over the last 10 years. And after putting that into the compound interest calculator and looking at the difference, it was pretty shocking. I realised I really have to start making some smart decisions and taking some control here. And then after the Covid crash happened, bingeing all the Equity Mates episodes and my first two really important investments were just buying Sydney Airport and Qantas while they were down at dirt cheap prices.

Alec: [00:06:06] I just loved us. Yeah, yeah. Sir James, since you know you've started investing, you've been through a lot of Equity Mates. You've actually written and your own intro to investing guide, which you share with your friends. Can you give us some insight into some of the key, I guess, key lessons or key points in your intro to investing guide?

James: [00:06:29] Yeah, of course. So it is pretty much a summary of everything I've learnt on the Equity Mates podcast.

Alec: [00:06:35] He said a third, we should. We should have just got that and realised that as our book,

James: [00:06:40] we're reading your book and I'm reading it like it's really similar to what I've what I've written. It's just in a bit of less detail. It's only about 10000 with 10000 words long, and it just starts out with, you know, the reasons why I should be investing, how many people are running out of money in retirement and how that is such a big issue that a lot of people aren't really aware of and how, you know you really are disadvantaging yourself if you've got large chunks of money sitting in the bank, getting eaten away by inflation. And then I just go on to explain a few simple ways of how you can get started that a really easy like micro investing apps, simple ETFs or Lassie's, where you can just trust your money to someone else and you don't have to worry about the stress of following the markets? Or am I making the right decisions? I'm more of a passive style, which is a great way to get people started and just keeping things simple and flexible so you can change it up as your life circumstances change along.

Alec: [00:07:36] Love that. I really needed that when I started investing.

Bryce: [00:07:41] poster boy for Equity Mates over here right? Which aims we certainly appreciate you sharing your journey with us so far, and we will now hear from the next community member. So we're joined by Natasha Etschmann, a.k.a. Tash Invests, who has built a platform sharing financial information and her journey across social media, in particular Instagram and Tik-tok. If you want to listen to an episode that we did with hash head back in the Get Started Investing feed, it was awesome to hear about her journey in more detail. But Tash, welcome back.

Natasha Etschmann: [00:08:16] Thank you. So excited to be back.

Bryce: [00:08:18] How and why did you get started investing?

Natasha Etschmann: [00:08:21] How? I just googled lots of stuff and hoped for the best kind of

Bryce: [00:08:25] like

Natasha Etschmann: [00:08:26] I've always been interested in, like saving to travel and wanting to make more money. But I also wanted to work in the health care industry. So best always seemed like a way to make money and do both. So, yeah, I just bought four units of Ivy Bay, which is very fun. I was just from lots of Googling and research, I guess, and just hoping for the best, really?

Bryce: [00:08:42] What was IBD

Natasha Etschmann: [00:08:44] S&P 500 index?

Bryce: [00:08:46] And you've just been Dollars costing into that? Yeah, I think

Natasha Etschmann: [00:08:49] I answered your next question. No, I never actually bought Aviva again $7000 worth and just watched it for a bit to see what would happen if our other ETF now. But yeah, let's put four and watched it, I guess.

Bryce: [00:09:00] Nice. And I guess you've been buying into ETFs quite frequently. Have you moved on to buy individual stocks or is the strategy now still just plug away ETF?

Natasha Etschmann: [00:09:12] No, it's still to say yes. I don't really like watching individual stocks or researching them that much. I want something really easy, so I just invest a thousand dollars a time, and it's when I have the money. And yeah, it's been going pretty well.

Bryce: [00:09:23] Nice. So when we last spoke, you were following the fire movement or the concept of it and dollar cost averaging into stocks and sort of wanting to build that retirement early sort of fund. You've since been able to take a couple of months off work and travel around the country, which has been awesome. Can you just talk us through that? You've obviously been able to feel sort of financially stable off the back of the investing that you've done?

Natasha Etschmann: [00:09:47] Yeah, generally wasn't a choice, but I back when I met you guys in March, my plan was to do eight weeks, pack at uni, go back to my full time job, which paid really well for a few months, do another eight weeks graduate business. But I was a bit sick of work and getting a bit burnt out, so I'll just go to a snowy season. So I quit my job and moved over to the snow, which was great for two months before lockdowns happened. And I lost my snow job and was just kind of stuck in New South Wales with border closures. But I was in a very privileged position compared to most people because I have a puzzle properties, property aside, money coming from that, I have dividends. I was still making money from shares anyway, so it works out really well. So I just went a month and Mambilla went up to Byron Bay and I'm in Sydney, so it's been incredible having that basis to be able to travel around with.

Alec: [00:10:28] I think it's the it may not be the retire early part of five, but it's definitely the financial independence part of the fire.

Natasha Etschmann: [00:10:34] Yeah, help me out to have a break and like having an emergency fund as well. I went over with like 20 grand in savings being like, if I need this, I need it. But yeah, it's worked out really well having about security.

Bryce: [00:10:42] And so you've come from a position where you probably had a more reliable paycheque than you do at the moment. From that, you could have been investing quite regularly into the markets. I would assume has what's happened over the last few months changed how you think about investing more, you obviously can't, I assume, be investing as regularly as as you were before.

Natasha Etschmann: [00:11:02] Yeah. So I was really before my mindset was just like work as much as possible, invest as much as possible, and I can kind of enjoy it a bit later on. Having the break has been really interesting to say that you don't need to burn yourself out completely to reach your goals and like life is to be enjoyed as well. So I was working my job as we did fifty six hour weeks, including sleep just as well. I was also doing overtime, but now it was like working the snow, working six hour days, like going snowboarding every day and it was like a much happier life thing. Like Cool, I work an easy job that's not emotionally taxing. I go snowboarding and I can still save a little bit of money on the side. So if I didn't do like the work beforehand, I would have in this position. But seeing the both sides of it to be really interesting.

Alec: [00:11:38] Well, Tash, you started your investing journey and went straight into a Broad-Based ETF and you also have a positively geared property and you have a $20000 emergency fund. So I think there's like a lot of the hallmarks of like good financial discipline there. And in a future episode, we're going to unpack some of the best resources that I guess help to understand so much at such an early age because it's impressive. And I look back and I wish I had the wherewithal to do some of the Ren.

Bryce: [00:12:11] Before we hear from our next guest, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and then we'll be right back into it.

Alec: [00:12:18] So we're joined by Maddie, who is a 23 year old sharing her investing journey across her social media channels with the aim of delivering more accessible information and knowledge to everyday people. You can check out her Instagram at Money with Maddie. Maddie, thanks for joining us today.

Maddie: [00:12:35] Thank you so much. Great pleasure to be here.

Alec: [00:12:37] So, Maddie, in this episode, we're talking about the story of people's first investments and how or why they got started. So can you take us back to the very start of your investing journey? Why did you decide to start investing and talk us through the process of actually figuring out how to get started?

Maddie: [00:12:55] Yeah, definitely. So I feel like my how am I? Why has changed from when I started to now? My first investment was when I turned 18. I have been looking into the share market for a little bit and surprisingly my first purchase was not an Australian stock. I actually decided to invest my first lot of money that I'd say got into Apple shares, which has gone very, very well. And she started five years ago. Great investment choice then. I haven't made so many good ones since the learning curve, but back then it was really just a matter of investing in a company that I've used to my entire life and something that I absolutely love. I have iPhones, iPads, AirPods watches, everything Apple. And I thought, Well, why not invest in the company that I give most of my savings to this point in time? I'm making money, right? So I'll make money. The thing is, I didn't really know what balance sheets were. I didn't know what charts were. I had no clue at that point in time. All I knew was how much one of the shares were. And I think my first bundle of shares was about $2000 and Apple shares. And at the time, they were $97 before that four to one split. So you can imagine how happy I am right now. But yeah, that's pretty much that was how I started getting, investing and learning over the years, how the capital growth had helped me out. The why has changed since. So at the start, it was more about how to make money. Now it's more become a way to make a passive income for myself and other income stream, and also to give myself more flexibility and freedom with my everyday life and with my future. So I think I was thinking of present money in the in the past, and now I'm thinking of future money going further into investing now.

Alec: [00:14:49] Well, Maddie buying Apple shares as an 18 year old, you probably if you were going to write a textbook on investing, that would probably be the textbook way to start. So full credit for starting in such a sensible but also high growth way. Most people listening to this, you know, definitely may be listening to you talk and hearing that you started investing at 18. You know, some of us are probably a bit envious. We missed out on some compounding, starting a bit later than 18. What was the process to become interested in investing at such a young age? Was it? Was it your parents or was it something that you just started researching yourself? Well, I was investing a priority for you.

Maddie: [00:15:31] It was something that I had been interested in since I was about 13. My dad's an accountant, but he was more on the commercial side of things and was building businesses not to do too much with investing itself. But he did teach me a lot about numbers, and I feel like from that ever since I was young, I've always been in a saving mindset. I've always been putting myself at home, which I just recently purchased two months ago. That was at 15, and my savings just weren't climbing at the rate that I was hoping they were to catch up with the market even since then, and I was talking to him about it. And what does he do with his money? And when I was about 17, he started showing me about showing me shares and what he does. And my dad is definitely more a trader than investor, and he gets very caught in the excitement of rising and falling of the stocks. And he doesn't. He always purchases individual companies. That's where I first started, and that's why I bought Apple. I didn't know what ETFs were like. These were anything like that. I just need to invest in companies. That's why I started and also because I wanted to start speeding up my husband. It definitely helps in that respect. But over the years, I've definitely got more resources and there's so much more information out there than there was when I was 16 to 18 that I've now been able to use to learn more and be able to tweak my investing strategy a lot further.

Alec: [00:16:57] Yeah, nice. Well. Full credit to your dad. Engaging with you about investing early. You know, I think that's actually a theme that we're sort of hearing in these conversations is that peoples whose parents engage with them about money and sort of help them understand it while they're a kid, you know, started investing a. And, you know, you're 23, you've just put a, you know, just bought a house and have been investing for five years, it's pretty impressive. So any parents listening out there normalise money conversations, start talking about money early and help your kids get started investing

Maddie: [00:17:34] Oh, definitely.

Alec: [00:17:35] So Maddie, will, we'll leave it there, and then we'll have you back next episode to talk about some of the barriers and myths that you faced as an investor. We'll move on to our next community member now. Dylan is a father of two who began investing in stocks in 2019, thanks in part to the barefoot investor. He's since taken an interest in the fire movement, barefoot investor and the fire movement. It's a miracle that Bryce has led him on the show, but Dylan is going to share how he got started investing and tell us a little bit about his investing style. So, Dylan, let's start at the beginning. Why did you get started investing and what's the story of your first investment?

Dylan: [00:18:24] My life was going back to full time work, so she'd had time off with our kids and wanted to go back to full time, but she was worried about paying too much tax. And as far as I sort of had always known, the way to avoid tax was buying an investment property. So it was something that I was considering at the time and until I read the barefoot investor. So as you know, the barefoot investors largely around personal finance and his philosophies definitely down the down the shares path rather than the property. So that made me think, okay, there's a whole other world that I hadn't really even sort of considered, which was their investing around the same time or similar time. We actually lost two family members to cancer, so Amanda lost her dad to cancer and I lost an aunt who was very, very close to me also to cancer within a couple of years and neither of them. They both went right up to the point where they couldn't work anymore, so then didn't really get a chance to enjoy any kind of retirement. And they also left left us a chunk of money when they passed and also some shares that we were looking at. Part of the process was assessing the shares around whether or not we needed to split those with some other relatives or to keep them, and we decided in the end to split them. But what that started for me was a process of actually watching a stock. So that was a gold mine that was a gold mine. Evolution mining. Yep. So I was tracking the price of evolution up and down and discussing it with my brother in law as to whether or not we sold or kept it. And eventually we decided to sell and split them and we split the money. So that was my sort of first introduction to keeping an eye on tracking the processes of watching the movement of shares, really. Then I was part of the blue, actually part of the Barefoot Blueprint, which was the spin off from the book if you if you really enjoyed the book so much. You were then encouraged to become part of this blueprint club, which I which I did, and a guy on there random person put on it, put out a tape around Australian biotech company Image, which is looking at immunology treatments for cancer. So for me, the idea that link to the cancer and I thought and a lot about immunology over the last couple of years, certainly not really interested in knew nothing about it, obviously. So I put some money into it, just a small amount. And and those two were essentially my first investments. Now, imaging is my favourite side of an investment so far. So I hear you guys talk about what's your first investment, your most successful and if you count in Eugene is my first, then I'm going to say yes, definitely on a on a percentage basis because things skyrocketed. Even today, it's actually doing great things. So yeah, that was that was how it first got into investing and got into the sharemarket. At the same time, I put in some money to a listed investment company, Whitefield, which I liked for other reasons relatively boring. But yeah, it's diversified. And because I'm invested in a gold miner, I thought, Well, go for a stock that doesn't include any material materials, which Watson does. So yeah, my first three and yeah, really, from there, I've sort of listened, started listening to people like yourselves a little bit more and recognising that the reasons I bought my first few shares weren't necessarily, you know, it's not like that, I'd say to someone who's starting out, Hey, you go out and do this. But for me, what it did was was allow me to actually keep an eye on something and get involved in the company, especially with imagery like every sort of announcement that comes out or presentation they put out. You know, I'd get on there and have a listen to it, look on a check, Twitter now and then be young to be looking at tik-tok and all.

Bryce: [00:22:17] Although never, never

Dylan: [00:22:20] even Instagram escapes me a little bit. But yeah, get as much information as I can on those companies and then, yeah, really follow follow their journey, I guess. And given what that company is trying to do, it's just something that, yeah, it's really exciting. And you know, it's good to be part of the journey. Like I say, Yeah,

Alec: [00:22:38] yeah, I'm just looking at Amy Jones share price chart. It's gone from about three cents at the start of 2020 to fifty three cents, so it'll be, yeah,

Dylan: [00:22:47] we'll be pretty happy was yeah, the cool thing was I actually paid a little bit more than what. For three cents, obviously, this is back in 2019, so pay under five, let's say. Yeah, a friend of mine looking at a couple of months later or a couple of weeks later, you know, you bought in at the wrong time, you know, you bought it on the way up and then it's dropped. Okay, fair enough. I'm going to hold it. And I have never seen bought in more than 12 cents. And then at 30 recently, they did a cat raising. Yeah, that's right. Yes, and they did a capital raising event. I tried to participate in that at a at a low level, but I think they allocated based on the number of shares you already had because there was a small investor only got quite a bit a small amount. But yeah, I've also got options in there now because of that, because of that purchase. And that's something I've always been interested in. I read genuinely to you. Yeah. Think she covers options in her book, and that was something that really interested me. That is constantly they didn't want to sort of dabble in just yet before I learnt too much. But yeah, I'm excited to own options.

Alec: [00:23:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot that we sometimes get a few questions about options, and I think the main thing is, you know, if you're interested in it, there's plenty you can learn about it, but you know, you got to you got to do the work. It's it's like another layer of complexity. But look, congratulations, not everyone. Not everyone gets their first investment to be a 10 bagger. So um, that's that's pretty exciting. Hopefully, it's always this easy for you.

Dylan: [00:24:22] Well, that's the thing is, you don't wanna get too excited. Individual stories, obviously, that you lose all your money kind of thing. And I'm like, Oh jeez, it's a bit dangerous for me that I that I had a winner at the beginning. So I've got to I've got to really temper that. Hmm.

Bryce: [00:24:35] Well, I think the key takeaway from me doing on this story is that, you know, you knew nothing and it wasn't until you actually got involved and got active in the movements that you started taking more interest in. And that's one of the key messages that we often try and get across is that you can do as much research in paper based practise as you want, but it's not until you have that stock. You follow it in the online and get involved in. It's, you know, as you said, updates and annual general meetings and that sort of stuff that you really start to to learn about yourself as an investor and the stock market. So, yeah, great. Definitely. Or Ren. Look, it's great to hear from from our community members and thank you to to James, Tash, Matty and Dillon for sharing with us your experiences of why you got started investing. Always great to hear and to hear from other community members. So OK. The series continues. Next episode we are asking What is the biggest barrier or myth that you faced when you started your investing journey and everyone faces barriers? So this is a good opportunity to figure out if you're facing one that may have been broken by some of our community members.

Alec: [00:25:44] This is a good opportunity to figure out whether you're facing challenges in life. You don't realise, Oh my God.

Bryce: [00:25:50] actually facing that. But look, we'll close out. The summer series is brought to you by Super Hero. They allow you to buy Aussie and US shares and ETFs with no monthly account fees, and you can earn Qantas points with superhero. So visit Super Hero dot com.au/Qantas to learn more. Eligibility criteria, terms and conditions and fees and charges apply, but stick with us. We'll be picking it up next week for episode five.

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Meet your hosts

  • Alec Renehan

    Alec Renehan

    Alec developed an interest in investing after realising he was spending all that he was earning. Investing became his form of 'forced saving'. While his first investment, Slater and Gordon (SGH), was a resounding failure, he learnt a lot from that experience. He hopes to share those lessons amongst others through the podcast and help people realise that if he can make money investing, anyone can.
  • Bryce Leske

    Bryce Leske

    Bryce has had an interest in the stock market since his parents encouraged him to save 50c a fortnight from the age of 5. Once he had saved $500 he bought his first stock - BKI - a Listed Investment Company (LIC), and since then hasn't stopped. He hopes that Equity Mates can help make investing understandable and accessible. He loves the Essendon Football Club, and lives in Sydney.

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