As you may remember, if you’ve read my Self-Help Summary of Do Nothing by Celeste Headlee, one of the Actions is Invest.
Basically, if we never invest in the companies whose services we use or whose goods we buy, we will never get a share of the profits and, as a result, we will most likely never be truly wealthy, no matter how much effort we put into our career. As Warren Buffet is claimed to have said, “If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you'll work until you die."
On my old website, at the end of 2020, I wrote about how one of my goals for 2021 was to learn as much as I could about how to build a portfolio of stocks that would provide passive income through dividends, and to start investing accordingly. I read the book The Dividend Investor by Rodney Hobson and that was as far as it went. In 2022, we created Aiyana and my focus shifted to learning everything I could about babies. I intentionally put learning how to invest on the back burner.
But, just the other day, I decided that 2024 is the year that I’m going to restart my learning journey. I’ve allocated two hours a week to doing so: one hour on a Wednesday, and one on a Thursday (while Aiyana is at my mum and dad’s). My plan is to learn as much as I can on the Wednesday, and then write about what I’ve learned on here on the Thursday. I’m giving up on creating The Ultimate Resource for Aspiring Writers of Commercial Fiction and Non-Fiction in Scotland for now, which is what I’ve been trying to do in those hours up until now, since it seems futile.
My first step is going to be going through The Dividend Investor again, to see what parts I highlighted as being particularly useful, and take it from there. Martin Lewis’s articles Share Trading Need to Knows and How to Invest for Beginners will be my other jumping off points.
If I think too far ahead, I feel overwhelmed by the amount there is to learn. But I do have a first class degree in Maths, Statistics and Finance, so I should be well equipped to climb this particular mountain. Ultimately, I’d like to become enough of an expert that I could teach others, since teaching brings me joy, and I feel it is my life’s work to help others better their lives in ways that I uniquely can. And, one lesson I’ve learned over the years is that, simply dedicating one hour a week to something, even if you don’t do it every week, but do it most weeks, guarantees that you’ll make significant progress.
The reason I’ve decided that now is the time to begin again is because I was thinking the other day about how stressful my life would be if my mum wasn’t willing and able to watch Aiyana full-time until she goes to nursery, and by then we’ll hopefully have another baby and so it will continue. She can only do so because she works part-time some evenings and weekends. She isn’t old or rich enough to retire yet: she’s only 61.
I’m so privileged and blessed that these are our circumstances, and I would be devastated if I couldn’t return the favour to my own kids when they reproduce. What if Aiyana has a baby - on purpose, or by accident - when she’s 20, say? I’ll only be 53. I’ve barely started working as it is. I didn’t finish my PhD until I had just turned 27, and I worked as a freelance maths tutor for the next three years, so I’ve only really been in my career for the past three years, and for six months I was off on maternity leave. So it seems unlikely that I’d be able to give up my job full-time to watch my future grandchildren in 19 years time if need be - unless I find a way to start making money in my sleep as Warren Buffet recommends. And learning how to invest seems like a sensible place to start.
So stay tuned. I’m going to begin my new learning journey after Christmas once the holidays are over - on Wednesday 10th January to be precise. We shall see how I get on.