MoneyTok: Practical Advice and Tips on Money, Investing, Wealth Creation and Financial Independence

Many of us - maybe most of us - take advice and tips from our friends and peers. Or perhaps we might read articles about high net worth people and how they made their money. But few of us are privileged to connect with and observe the habits of financially successful people on a day to day basis. Well today we have with us Mark Reeve, Partner at St James Place Wealth Management, who’s spent his entire career advising people on how to deploy and invest their money. And he’s going to give us insights into how financially successful people think about managing money.

Show notes available here.

Don’t you sometimes wonder how it must feel to be an early investor in all these startups that raise money and get valued at millions or tens of millions of dollars? Like, think about the people who invested early in Grab or Ola or Moka or any of the billion-dollar startups in the region. They must have made a killing on their investment, right? So how did those people manage to get the opportunity to invest in startups and how could we do the same?

These kinds of people who write the first few checks at the earliest stages of a startup are called angel investors and today I’m chatting with one of them, Alex Dwek.

Alex, who’s Chief Business Officer of Nas Academy, is someone with a unique viewpoint on the topic because he’s not only an angel investor in several startups, he’s actually been through the fund-raising process himself at the leadership level of a Nas Academy, a happening new startup based in Singapore.

And in case you love what he has to say and want to learn more, Alex has kindly offered to answer questions via a future blog post so feel free to the link below  to submit questions to him.

Alex has kindly offered to answer questions about money and finances from our listeners through the blog posts. So, click the link below to submit questions you may have about Angel Investing.

Questions? Submit them here.

Show notes available here.

We recently read a couple of worrying reports. One was about Dragonflies spreading north as the world warms, giving them a greater habitable area. And the second one was about animals shapeshifting in response to climate crisis. Warm blooded animals are changing beaks, legs and ears to adapt to a hotter climate and better regulate temperature.

And further on the human side, the latest issue of the Economist reports that climate commitments so far will at best give us a 50-50 chance of hitting the outer bound 2 degree temp rise with only a 5% chance of keeping with 1.5 degrees, the much safer limit that let's us continue with life as usual. That's chilling, in all the wrong ways.

So if you are still reluctant to adapt to the changing climate, it is time to learn from the animal kingdom and evolve.

Show notes available here

The IPCC report on climate change came out recently and it was a real gloomy one. Looks like we are on the brink of climate disaster and we have only ourselves to blame. And this was only one of the many disasters happening around us all the time.

Honestly, doesn't it seem like each time you tune in to the news there's something happening in the world that you really don't like? Something that really goes to the heart of your values or what you stand for? And all you can do is just fret about it. Climate change? Animal cruelty or over-fishing? Racism? Guns? Religion? Drugs and opioids?

Regardless of what gets you all fired up, it seems hard or inconvenient or downright impossible to make change happen with our limited influence over the world isn't it? After all, what can the average person on the street do about all these things? Well, turns out, if you have a bit of free cash, you can actually do a lot

Show notes here: https://bit.ly/mt-ep17

Get your free retirement location checklist and full episode transcript here

Unpredictable climactic events have been occurring with increasing frequency as well as intensity and it's no longer just animals or insects or forests getting decimated. This time it's personal. The change is literally at our doorsteps in the form of wildfires, record high temperatures, flash floods, droughts.

What used to be something we thought was a hundred years away is now being measured in decades. In our lifetime. And so, weirdly and very unfortunately, it has suddenly become critical to factor in climate change when laying out your retirement plan. How should we begin?

Free resource: Checklist to spot dividend traps. Click the show notes link below

It is common nowadays to fantasise about side hustles that will earn us a tidy passive income so we can eventually quit our jobs and chase our dreams. So we give up our weekends chasing side hustles in the hope that we'll magically stumble into a niche and make massive amounts of money overnight. But that rarely happens - and definitely not without a lot of work.

So why bother, especially when there's a far easier way to earn truly passive income with very little effort?

Show notes: https://bit.ly/mt-ep15

So, you can multitask like a goddess with 10 arms, but not one of those arms is managing your money? Or maybe you're the woman who has your entire work project mapped out in your head yet you have no roadmap for your personal financial journey? Or maybe you're your family go-to gal for all sorts of non-google-able facts but you have barely any idea about your bank balance?

Money management for many people, especially women, can feel a bit like flossing. You know it's important, but you keep putting it off because you hate doing it so much. But with Covid making lives and livelihoods more uncertain, don't let this be the One That Got Away. It's time to get engaged with your Finance.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/mt-ep14

Free SPAC-Spotters Checklist with this episode. Click through to show notes using the link below

Tech companies have really soared in price over the past year or so. So it's almost impossible now to find good growth prospects in today's market. That's why lots of people - myself included - are waiting cash in hand for a new generation of tech unicorns to IPO, so we can scoop them up before they too become unaffordable.

Unfortunately IPOs are long, painful and costly affairs for the startups in question, so many of them are now opting for a different, more direct route to market by merging with shell companies called SPACs. This saves them a lot of time and money and guarantees their valuation, all good things for the startup. But is the SPAC mania also good for retail investors like us?

Show notes here

Free inflation-directed investing guide with this episode. Link below.

Why is it that a few dollars could buy a month of groceries 50 years ago, but now it isn't enough to cover a single family dinner out? In one word - inflation.

Inflation is the single most important thing affecting your income, savings, investment and wealth creation - in other words pretty much your entire financial future, so whether you are a salary/ wage earner, a new or experienced investor, or even a home-maker responsible for the household budget, this is something you absolutely must know about.

Get show notes as well as our free inflation-directed investing guide here: https://bit.ly/mt-ep12 

There are two investing maxims that you would have heard often: "Cash is king" and "buy low sell high". But thanks to an extraordinary amount of economic stimulus/ money printing, there is a very real possibility of inflation shooting up and seriously reducing the value of your cash holdings. As a result, proactive investors are desperate to put their money into any kind of appreciating asset, including those kinds of alternate or fringe asset classes without fixed standards of value like crypto, NFTs, startups etc.

In these markets, the old maxims might not work as well as they used to. The rules of today are different. "Cash is trash' and 'buy high, sell higher". So what should we regular folk do?

Click here for show notes and free resources: a PDF of 11 Trading Mantras + a simple template for a Trading Journal that professionals use to stay on top of their own trades.