Each week the NZ Herald's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's what to know if you're a DIY investor diving into the sharemarket. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Even in the relatively small time that this podcast has existed, the investing landscape has changed enormously.

It's only in the last couple of years that we've seen easy options popping up for people to start investing in shares, on their own terms, with whatever money they have to hand.

Before that it was common that you needed several thousand dollars at a time just to be in the game.

Now the industry is opening up, making wealth creation a possibility for a far wider range of people.

I want to be clear before we get into this – I myself am a DIY investor, and I think this is a wonderful thing to create opportunities for people, and level the playing field.

But in opening things up, we do also open up more opportunities for things to go wrong.

When you dive in by yourself, there's the possibility of making serious mistakes, or taking on more risk than you realised.

In the latest podcast I talked to George Carter from Nikko Asset Management NZ.

If you have a question about this podcast, or question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/ Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/ and Twitter here https://twitter.com/FrancesCook

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