In today's article, I am going to tell you more about how I invest my money, primarily in the means of financial instruments.
We will divide this topic into two parts:
- Financial instruments for stocks
- Financial instruments for crypto
Financial instruments for stocks
As for the financial tools I use, there are several. And they keep adding up because certain tools are good for certain things. As for stocks, there are fewer of them, so let's start with that.
As soon as I turned 18 I opened an investment portfolio with my bank, which offers only mutual funds.
Mutual fund = professionally managed investment fund. There are certainly some advantages to this. But the disadvantages far outweigh any advantages. It's definitely a good thing for people who want to preserve the value of their money and don't expect big returns. The huge downside is the insane fees. Entry fee, management fee, sales fee... fee for everything. So in the end, when the average annual inflation rate (here in the country) is 4.8%, according to the chart, my annual return is 8% - not counting fees. So in the end, I barely beat inflation, and have a few pennies left on top.
So I opened my own broker account soon after. I usually don't buy individual stocks, but index funds. Average return greater than a fund from a bank + no big fees. This was later joined by another broker. And I use both accounts quite actively, each suited for a different type of financial instruments. I still haven't completely abandoned investment from my bank. I still put 1000 CZK (45USD) there monthly, just because of the small annual bonus the bank gives me.
Stocks are pretty boring honestly. I still invest in them, it's more secure than crypto and offers a gradual progression without big drops. That's why almost all my attention soon turned to crypto.
Financial instruments for crypto
There are many tools I use. As for wallets, I'm not worried about my finances being stolen. I'm careful about scams and I'm not a crypto whale to be attractive to hackers. For that reason I don't have a hardware wallet, most of my finances are interest bearing, staked, etc. Maybe that will change in time, but for now I don't feel threatened. So I use the software wallet Exodus + in-browser Metamask. I have some change left on Exodus. I usually use it more as a gateway when I send money. On Metamask I have some money, because I'm testing one P2E game right now. I'm not usually interested in games like this, but this one really caught my attention.
And in addition to wallets, I use a few instruments that I mainly use for interest. I use NEXO, for BCH and other tokens. I use Binance as my main exchange + I use a lot of earn options there. Crypto.com as my secondary exchange and I am a big fan of CRO as well. I got their metal card - the cashback is really sweet, use their DeFi platform… On top of that I use more not so well known platforms for their staking, earning options.
Let me tell you, when I check all the platforms at least once a month, it takes half an afternoon... And not to forget, I use CoinMarketCap and their portfolio manager - to track all the coins I have and my progress.
Today I've covered mostly the financial tools I use. As far as the actual investing goes, it happens quite irregularly. The only regularity is in the case of the banking instrument.
But I've already set my financial goal for the coming year a little bit and according to my calculations I should be able to start investing regularly in February.
Thank you for reading! Would appreciate any tips!
You can read my other articles about the Czech Republic, crypto, and many others topics on my publish0x profile here.
You can also find me on noise.cash & read.cash.
Originally published at https://helpwithpenny.com
