Good Morning Green Panda Friends. Today we are discussing our own investment independence. We are young twenty-something’s who are trying to graduate from college, land our dream job, and basically find our place in the world. We may have always lived under the watchful eye of our parents, our teachers, and our older siblings; but now we are becoming financially independent and making our own decisions.
It’s Important to Start Saving in Your 20’s
It is very possible that up until now we have never really found financial independence because we always earned our money, saved our money, and spent our money under the guidance of our parents. My parents insisted that I started to work at 15 years old. I started to become financially responsible for earning my own money as well as my own spending. I was allowed to spend half of each pay check and I had to “save” the other half. However, my money was kept in a Savings Account, it was not invested. Even our financial institutions offer guidance on how students should spend and save our money. Most financial institutions offer students a limited number of included monthly transactions for a preferred monthly account fee.
As financially responsible young adults we have to make the conscience choice to start saving money, but we also have to decide how we want to start investing our money. We have to start thinking about our future goals and unfortunately saving money in a High Interest Savings Account is just not going to cut it.
Investing with a Discount Broker in Your 20’s
A Discount Broker Account is an investment account that allows clients to directly purchase Stocks, Bonds, Fixed Income Investments, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), Mutual Funds, Precious Metals, and Foreign Currency.
The advantage of investing with a Discount Broker in our 20’s is that we can learn about different types of investments at a young age. As our income grows and our investment knowledge expands so will our investment portfolio. It is nice to have someone (aka our Parents or a Personal Banker) tell us how to invest our money, but it is definitely better to find our own investment personality and style.
The more involved we are in making our own invest decisions, then the more motivated we may be to save our money. It is also important to learn from our investment mistakes; if we learn about market movements we can learn what to do and what not to do in our investment portfolio.
The downside of investing with a Discount Broker in our 20’s is that there are fees associated when purchasing our investments. As a student or a young professional we may not be able to afford excessive transaction fees. The more often we purchase investments in our Discount Broker account the lower the transaction fees will be.
There is no investment advice provided to clients who choose to open a Discount Broker account. We are 100% responsible for choosing, purchasing, and selling our own investments. Opening a Discount Broker account definitely forces us to find financial and investment independence.
Photo by Katrina
Tahnya is 30 years old and lives in Montreal Quebec. She graduated in 2005 from Concordia University, and she currently works for a major International Financial Institution. She recently launched http://www.mediamadam.ca/. You can follow her on Twitter @TahnyaP.