TRANSCRIPT:
Hey everyone, it’s Tony Pacione, Managing Partner from Gasima Global Asset Management. I’m here to talk to you today about where to start when investing. The investing life cycle is something I like to call “where everybody starts out in the same place and goes through their life of investing.” It usually begins with a person’s first interaction with money, which typically involves the decision of whether to spend it or save it. Traditionally, this starts when you’re young, often after a significant milestone in your life, like a religious ceremony or a graduation from middle school or high school. Whatever the amount of money gifted, as a kid, we often think it’s life-altering.
Most kids want to run out and spend it. But, depending on who was there to guide us, we might have been encouraged to start our investing life cycle. Some could be guided better than others. I can remember when I got some gift money back in elementary school for something—I forget what it was. My dad took me down to the local bank, and we opened what used to be called a passbook savings account. It was almost like a passport book where every time you deposited money, there was a timestamp, and the accrued interest was printed.
Now, I know I just dated myself because most kids today are running around the playground with smartphones, day trading crypto in elementary school, right? There’s no such thing as a passbook savings account anymore. It seems like we’ve made leaps and bounds in investing in the digital world over the last generation, and that’s a good thing. But the real question isn’t access to investing; it’s about what we were taught at the start of our personal investing life cycle. Were you taught to spend, save, day trade, or invest? Those are all different concepts. I guess you could also donate it, but those are the options.
In this age, with all the tools of finance at your fingertips on your phone, that access doesn’t guarantee smart behavior. The behavior has to be taught, and it’s usually taught at the beginning of your investing life cycle. Providing access to this broader community, where anyone can easily trade any asset in the world in small increments, is great, but what advice are you given on what to actually invest in? And most importantly, what types of accounts or formats are you going to use to invest? And what about the concept of compounding wealth?
Well, watch the next video where I dive into a little lesson on that.