Hi Friend,
It’s great to meet you.
The first thing I would like to do is introduce myself and tell you how I got into investing. My name is Robert Sadler and I’ve been involved in investing for as long as I can remember.
It was always important to me to learn about investing. It was also something that was very confusing and scary to me. I remember a conversation with a friend back in my teens. He told me he had just taken a job investing in the stock market. This was very exciting to me. I recall being very impressed with his bravery and also very curious about how investing worked. At that moment I decided to change my degree from marketing to finance.
However, while I learnt a lot about finance, I didn’t really learn much useful about investing. First, I got a job doing finance for a consulting firm but honestly it was a real yawn fest. I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do –investment. I had a company pension from the firm but like most people I had very little idea what was going on with it and didn’t pay much attention to it.
Later I got laid off from the firm and I wound up cashing in my retirement to pay my rent. This was a common mistake I made and I actually cashed out my retirement plans a number of times when I needed the money now rather than later.
However, as I got older it became increasingly important that I treat my investments more seriously. I needed to stop wasting these opportunities. I needed to learn how to invest and where to invest so that I could feel certain that I was making the right choices.
For me, it’s always been important to make sure that when I finally retire that I can feel secure knowing that I can take care of myself. And retiring early is definitely a strong desire of mine. I very quickly realised that I would never earn enough money in savings accounts to meet this goal of mine. Especially now when savings interest rates are negative!
I did try reading the financial newspapers and various blogs to learn about investing but honestly, I found this confusing and quite honestly, not interesting. It was all noise to me and I wasn’t getting further along. There was no real actionable information that allowed me to make good investment choices.
So, I began taking professional exams in finance. I could see immediately that these courses were very different to the theoretical courses I had studied at college. The concepts I learned were clear and practical and gave me clear direction in how to invest. I spent many hours, days, months and years to figure this all out and in 2010 I received my professional charter.
Now I had the solution.
I had discovered how to invest. Where to invest. There was no need to take unnecessary risks.
The Solution…
The solution, I determined was to use an investment framework to guide your decisions. This framework would be based on the fundamental principles of investment, allowing you to get the best return you can at a tolerable risk while still earning more than you can get in savings accounts.
I applied this strategy to my own portfolio and while during times of financial crisis the portfolio has dipped in value, over time, the portfolio has increased in value, more than making up for the losses. I now have that confidence that I can meet my investment goal – which for me is just to earn more than the interest rate at the bank and eventually earn enough money to retire on.
There are many people out there who have no access to unbiased investment advice.
My friends have often asked me for investment advice and eventually I realised that there was an unmet need in society. There are many people out there who have no access to unbiased investment advice. Whether it be from the banks or from advisers trying to sell you a product that you don’t understand. Worse, sometimes people follow this advice and make losses.
So, what I do for people now is teach them the fundamental principles of investing, to provide a framework by which people can evaluate their own situation and choose the investments that are right for them.
But I’m happy to hear from you, if you’d like to know more so feel free to email me any questions or get in touch for a quick 15-minute chat (completely free) where we can discuss your specific situation and see if I can help.
Best,
Robert.
