Late to the investing game

Late is just as bad as never

I always pick up coins that I find on the street. Picture credits Paola Bassanese

I am so late to the whole investing thing. When I started working I didn’t have any financial goals or plans in mind, so I would simply spend my disposable income.

Then, as I was living in London, I caught the “getting on the property ladder” bug after years of flatsharing that had left me yierning for my own space.

If you read my previous posts you already know that I bought a studio flat in London and I stayed put there until I left the UK for Ireland.

The housing market experienced many peaks and troughs during my home ownership and I wasn’t smart enough to sell at the right time and get a bigger house or flat. I didn’t even need much – just having a separate bedroom instead of sleeping on a sofa bed with kitchen views would have suited me fine.

While I was watching my money disappear into an endless mortgage pit, thoughts of pension and savings felt completely alien. I was also reluctant to pay into a private pension scheme, as one of the companies I worked at chose a private pension investor that subsequently went bust, so we the employees had to say goodbye to the deductions our employer had taken automatically from our wages.

Having lived through recessions, the last thing on my mind was having a long term vision for my finances, as I was preoccupied to have enough money to pay the bills. Some things never change as the majority of my brain capacity is still taken up by working out how to pay the bills.

However, in the past few months one thing changed: I decided to finally start investing my spare money. We are talking petty cash sums at the moment but I wanted to get a taste for investing, how it works and what potential future benefits it could bring.

Risk aversion

I consider myself as a person who has taken risks in her life: I moved countries twice and have had different careers, exploring all the facets of my personality and skills. We are talking working in market research, technology, civil service, complementary therapies and publishing.

I do have some risk aversion when it comes to money: I have never been a high earner so the thought of losing everything has stopped me from experimenting with my finances.

I decided to put a few bobs aside and, using an investing app, I had to choose how to spend my petty cash.

Fast forward to now and I’ve lost 50 euro. Here’s how I lost the money.