An Introduction & A Disclaimer

We’d much sooner get our peckers out in front of each other than to discuss something as private as our hourly wage.

Astrologaster

Money, financial freedom, investing – if you’ve been following me online or in real life, you’ll have realised by now that I have a very deep interest in the idea of FIRE – Financial Independence, Retire Early. By now I am sure it has gone beyond just a hobby and is now just about a lifestyle for me. Man, I sound like one of those YouTube gurus you roll your eyes at…

With this interest of mine growing all the time, my good friend Freddie got me onto this really awesome YouTube channel – The Joseph Carson Show – where the host Joseph is super open about his finances. It got me thinking – we’re so guarded when it comes to anything to do with our money that our closest friends and family don’t even know our salaries. Convincing the population that our yearly income is something that needs to be a deeply kept secret is probably the only bad thing I have to say about capitalism…

In fact, even in one of the games I played – Astrologaster – one of the people you meet puts it most eloquently: We’d much sooner get our peckers out in front of each other than to discuss something as private as our hourly wage. Isn’t that an odd way of thinking of it?

Now onto the meat of this – with this series I will be keeping a track of my investments – specifically my share trading, and maybe my investment property too. I’ll be talking about each step to get to where I am – what I bought and why, how much and what I would have done differently with hindsight. I hope to grow my knowledge of investing by forcing myself to explain it, and I hope to help others in a similar situation. Or just provide a look at investing in New Zealand for the average Joe.

To this end, I’ll be going back to the basics – where to start, what to look for, what I have done and what my portfolio looks like at the moment. The portfolio will be a growing, changing beast, at least in theory.

And now I must put this in for the legal reasons…
I am not a financial advisor. All advice is taken with this in mind. I do not benefit from you using the same platform I do, or using a different one. I do not have any insider knowledge of any company listed. Everything I will talk about – from the tools to the news – will be as available to me as it is to you. Again: I am not a financial advisor and never will be.

Right, with that out the way, lets begin.