I am coming up on my year anniversary of writing for EG and after getting 3 direct messages on Instagram this week not-so casually pumping natural beauty products, suggesting I be my own boss/escape my 9-5 (an aside: I don’t have a 9-5, know your audience is sales 101) and aggressive asks of don’t you want to make passive income?!, I felt compelled to address a few issues.
First and foremost, my look.
I’m wondering what about my appearance screams that I would fall victim to a pyramid scheme. I double checked, and my social media does not replicate a single line of Bo Burnham’s hit single “A White Woman’s Instagram”. I have never used the term “girl boss” (even ironically) and have only one font in my Instagram bio (if you know, you know). If anyone cares to enlighten me on some different clothes to buy or photos to post or friends to break up with in order to stop this onslaught of #bossbabes – please let me know.
Secondly, and yes, this is targeted to the people who messaged me this week: if you want to make passive income… Invest your money! Invest. Your. Money. The money must be invested. I don’t know what other acrobatics I can do with this phrase to push my point here. And if, in fact, you do believe that this hyaluronic acid serum is made from the tears of God and golden locks of an Angel (i.e. I will never age a day once I use this product and my skin will never look dull or blotchy again)…Invest in it. Log on to your wealth simple trading account and search up the company. Oh, it’s not on the market? There’s probably a reason.
I was eating coconut feta and drinking red sangria with a friend this week and found myself nostalgic. I came home and went through my first ever article written for EG. (I’ve done 10 rewrites on this sentence; it still came out narcissistic and awful – I’m starting to see it now, maybe this is why the pyramid schemer’s keep coming for me). No matter, I was proud to see that my virginal analysis of the industry still stands up. And for any of us, me included, who sometimes need a reminder:
I’ve been working at Equity.Guru for 2ish months and have found the world of stocks and markets and companies to resemble a group of unruly boys on a playground. Except that they are grown and in glossy offices and say things like “I just closed on ABXY” (this is called a ticker symbol, they say it’s for efficiency, I say it’s sheer laziness) or “ABXY’s EBITDA margins make it a good buy” (pronounced “eee-bit-duhh” and it’s just a fancy acronym for earnings before taxes). The rhetoric screams money and is void of humanity but fundamentally seems to function as a way to keep people out. The whole rich get richer aphorism thrives in an environment that places itself as superior and untouchable.
After painting this lovely little image of vapid greed and finance bros, why should we care to learn about investing? The answer, as is the core of most answers whether hidden or blatant, is money. And try as my artistic heart might to negate this truth for a more romantic notion of the world, it is an absolute necessity. Money is freedom. And luckily, for my fellow investing amateurs, I am learning that to decode this language is far less challenging than the sound of it suggests.
The best investment advice I ever received from a co-worker:
- Invest in what you use and what you are interested in. For example, you probably make monthly payments to BC Hydro, Netflix and maybe even that niche brand of vegan bacon at Whole Foods. Maybe you’re fascinated by the ways in which the pandemic has brought up a whole new industry on health screening, or how psychedelics are being integrated into mental health treatment. These are the little articles you subscribe to and read by choice – out of curiosity rather than obligation. You’re conducting indirect investment research. These are the things you should invest in. What you use, and what you care about.
2. Don’t buy a dream. What he means by this, I think, is that when something seems “too good to be true”, it is (ahem, pyramid schemes). Making a fortune overnight is reserved for the 0.01% miracle story and if that’s what you’re looking for, you should probably try your luck in Vegas. (I hear the house only sometimes wins there). I too, in my year here, wrote about dreams:
Ever since the birth of Silicon Valley, our priorities have shifted from the things of reality to immaterial visions of the future. Hope, it could be argued, is our world’s most profitable commodity. These tech giants are revered as Gods because they give us just that, a promise to save a seemingly irrecoverable world. And really, can you blame us? It is a product of the times to be so easily taken by a dream.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t invest in your vision of the future, but rather, a vision of the future that you understand. Cryptocurrency? I don’t understand her. Bitcoin mining? No desire to learn. Mining in general? Quite boring. So, I stay away from investing in it.
If you need more evidence that you should be investing:
$1,000 over a 30-year period in
Checking (0.5% average annual interest) = $1,175
Savings (0.9% average annual interest = $1, 282
Investing (7% annual index average) = $7,000 +
(If this reasoning isn’t enough and you fancy yourself an idealist of sorts, investing allows the opportunity to place money behind people, ideas and companies you believe in).
To be a sap and sum it all up:
I have a yearlong headache and the same degree of existential dread as I did this time last year and a greater desire to be anywhere but home and a fractionally better appreciation for the little things – like a hug or a sunny day and a craving for pasta (usually) and am just as dehydrated as I was in December even though it was my New Year’s Resolution (as always) to drink more water and I still have a ceaselessly problematic addiction to coffee and an inability to write short sentences and an improved grasp of my financial future and, to be sure, a long way to go.
Nothing has changed except everything. Thank you for trucking along with me – if it was my time of month, I could maybe even cry.
Until next week.
“I’d like to have money. And I’d like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that’s too adorable, I’d rather have money” – Dorothy Parker