I have been giving a lot of money tips
and investing tips for quite a while now, so I wanted to take a look and see if
the advice that I have given in the past and that I give now is still good advice.
Does it actually work to keep things so
simple regarding your money and regarding investing your money?
We're going to take a look at an older video that I created and see if you had
actually followed that advice where you would be today with your money.
I am Tiffany Thomas with Wealthy
Tiffany Dotcom, and I achieved financial freedom at age thirty eight.
So if you were looking to achieve financial freedom at a young age as well,
hit that like button and hit the subscribe button and we're going to dive right in.
I like to keep things pretty simple around here.
I talk about investing in one stock fund and adding a few individual stocks
if you're really passionate about those companies and then if you want to reduce
your risk, I talk about adding a bond fund to your investments.
And if you have any interest in real estate, then I talk about getting started
in real estate investing and keeping that very simple by just investing
in buy and hold properties for the long term.
Let's talk about some advice that I gave back in May of twenty eighteen in a video
that is uploaded to my channel, which you can still watch if you want to.
Just as a side note, it is an older video.
I'm sitting on my couch holding my phone. So there you go.
In the video,
I share what I would recommend if I had ten thousand dollars to invest.
And the suggestions that I gave in that video are still relevant today.
In the video, I recommend investing in four different stocks.
The first one is Amazon, to buy a few shares of Amazon and then a few shares
of Google and then put the rest in Netflix and Facebook.
I actually own all of those investments and still think they are great.
The reason I am suggesting to invest in those individual stocks is because I
had seen such a great return with all of my individual stocks versus the index
fund that I was also investing in, which is still a great fund.
And we're going to talk about that in just a minute.
But I want to share where you would be today if you had followed my advice back
in twenty eighteen and invested in those companies.
All right.
If you would have purchased three shares of Amazon, you would have spent about five
thousand dollars and you would have seen that money double.
So you would have had a one hundred and eight point eight zero increase
on that five thousand dollars that you put into Amazon.
And then if you would have bought about
three shares of Google, that would be about three thousand dollars.
You would have seen over a hundred and ten percent increase in your investment.
So you would have six thousand three
hundred and four dollars and ninety three cents worth of Google.
And then if you would have invested about a thousand dollars in Facebook,
you would have seen over a sixty three percent increase.
So your one thousand dollars would have
turned into one thousand six hundred and thirty dollars and twenty seven cents.
And then if you would have invested a thousand dollars into Netflix,
you would have seen a forty four point eight seven increase on your money.
So you would have one thousand four hundred and forty eight
dollars and sixty six cents worth of Netflix,
which would give you a total amount of nineteen thousand eight hundred
and twenty three dollars and ninety four cents.
So you would have almost doubled your initial investment.
I felt like back in twenty eighteen those would be good companies to invest in.
They are pretty stable companies they are in the technology sector which continues
to grow because our economy continues to move more toward using technology.
So I still like those investments and I
personally own all of those investments right now.
And yes, the stock market has continued to go up.
So if we were looking at this when the stock market had crashed,
then all of these investments would be down, but so would everything else.
And like I mentioned before,
the reason I chose to recommend these four different stocks was because I had seen
such greater returns on my individual stocks rather than on the index fund
that I was invested in, that I still am invested in.
But here's the thing.
I'm not always suggesting to invest in certain individual stocks,
but I want to keep your investing as simple as you want to keep it.
So that's why I like investing in an index fund as well, because you have such
a diversification, you don't have to watch your individual stocks.
You're just investing in a simple fund.
And if you want to know which fund that is
and why I like it, I did create a video for you.
So I will leave a link above and below
in the description and you can check that out later on.
And let's take a look and see where we would be with our money if we chose
to keep it very, very simple and just invest
in the one index fund, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund.
If we would have invested that ten thousand dollars in just the Vanguard
total stock market index fund, we would have a total amount of sixteen
thousand sixty eight dollars and twenty three cents.
It's over a 60 percent return.
The only stock that was lower than this
was Netflix, forty four point eight seven percent.
So while that is still a good return, if we would have only invested in Netflix,
we would have underperformed the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index fund.
So that is why it is still a good idea to invest in an index fund.
And then you can add your favorite companies, your favorite individual stocks
to your investment portfolio only if you want to.
And that's also why we don't want to put
all of our money into just one individual stock.
So you can still invest in just a single
index fund and keep your investments super simple and create great returns over time.
I personally invest in that fund still and then I have a few stocks,
no more than 10 individual stocks that I like to invest in.
And of course, it is always more risky to invest in individual stocks because if
that one company does go bankrupt, then you would lose your investments.
Honestly, we can keep our investments
super simple and still make really good returns on our investments.
We can do it ourselves because we are
keeping it so simple that it won't take a lot of time to manage.
We don't need someone else to manage our
money because we are the ones that are going to care the most about our money.
And I'm not saying I have a magic eight ball and I know all of the best
investments to choose and when to choose them. That is not what I'm saying at all.
I'm just saying we can keep it simple.
We can invest in things that we know
that are stable and make really good returns on our money.
And we don't need other people to manage our money for us because they will take
a percentage of our money, our hard earned money,
and we don't have to outperform them because we would be paying them a certain
amount to manage our money so we can use that money to our advantage and have more
of our money invested and we get the returns on all of our money.
And then, of course, like I said before, if you have any interest in real estate,
you can also get started in real estate investing.
But here's what I don't want you to do.
I don't want you to leave all of your
money in a savings account because your money will not work for you.
So let's take a look and see what would
happen if we took that full ten thousand dollars and left it in a savings account.
I looked to see what interest rates were for savings accounts back in twenty
eighteen. Ally had an interest rate of one point four five.
So let's just say that you had a one point
four five percent interest rate on your savings account, which is not accurate
because we know that interest rates have dropped significantly recently.
But I'm just going to show you this example.
Best case scenario,
if you would have left that ten thousand in a savings account earning one point
four five percent interest, the total amount you would have is ten
thousand four hundred and forty four dollars.
So that is a significant difference
from sixteen thousand to almost twenty thousand dollars.
Hopefully you can see the importance of investing your money.
And of course, the stock market will go down, but over the long term it goes up.
So there's ups and downs throughout, but the trend goes up.
And if you are worried about the stock market crash, then check out the video
that I recently did about how to survive and prepare for a stock market crash.
I'll leave a link above and below and you can check that video out later.
And as a side note, by keeping your money
in a savings account, you're actually losing money because
you're not even keeping up with the inflation rate.
As you've probably noticed,
prices continue to rise on things as time goes along.
So if you want to have your money keep up with inflation, with those rising prices,
you need to have your money invested and you can keep it very, very simple.
As I have mentioned.
And I was actually talking with a client recently and she had mentioned that she
felt really stuck because she had decided to invest in a lot of different things
and she had gotten advice from a lot of different people.
If you make it complicated, you're going to feel overwhelmed and feel
stuck and then you won't be able to move forward.
And we don't want that to happen.
We want to be able to invest our money.
And the way to do that is to keep it simple.
If we don't complicate our investments, if we keep it very simple,
then we don't have to spend a lot of time managing our investments.
And that way we have time for other things
that we enjoy more maybe traveling or Zumba or spending time with family
or whatever it is that you like to spend your time on.
Comment below and tell me if you are going to keep your investments simple.
And if you found this video helpful, please hit that like button and share
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Thanks so much for watching.
I'll see you in the next video.