What should I invest in?

Hi Grace! I hope you are well!

Unfortunately, this question is impossible for anyone to answer (I know, bummer, right?). The financial services laws in Australia are super-strict and, in effect, will stop anyone, even professionals acting under a financial services licence, from answering a question like this without first:

1. Getting you to do a proper risk profile (many people assume a risk profile for themselves but it doesn’t always work out that way)
   
2. Doing a «fact find» (basically a really comprehensive list of your financial needs, goals and objectives), and
   
3. Taking into account all of the above, plus lots more.
   

You can refer to asic.gov.au or moneysmart.gov for more information on these things.

In short, there are two types of licensed financial information in Australia. «General financial advice» (or «general information») and «personalised financial advice». Both of these, General and Personal, require a financial licence.

There’s also «factual information», but that’s different story…

My broad understanding of how General and Personal differ is as follows:

General information = this information is what you’ll see on Pearler and much of on the internet. It cannot take into account anyone’s circumstances (e.g. «I’m divorced!»), needs (e.g. «Income, please!») or objectives («I want to retire – NOW!»). It must focus on general things, like the features of an investment, such as a company or an ETF, or the broad information that might describe different financial products (e.g. the difference between Super funds, or ‘how to invest’, a comparison website, etc.). Basically, no-one can tell anyone what to do unless…

Personalised advice = this is where a licensed financial planner can give you information that is tailored to your needs, goals or objectives. However, this requires a comprehensive analysis of personalised matters (such as goals, needs and objectives).

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Hi Grace, welcome!

We can’t really do ‘recommendations’ around here as that would be personal advice.

But what we can do is share some resources that’ll point you in the right direction to help you decide for yourself :)

I’ll share a few resources below, and I hope they don’t overwhelm you. Just take your time getting used to this new world of investing and learn as you go.

Some good places to start are the Shares page, which lists (in order I believe) the most popular investments in the Pearler community: https://pearler.com/explore/invest/au-shares

Also, the following article (which I wrote) has some important questions for a new investor to ask themselves: https://pearler.com/explore/learn/blog/invest...

After a bit of learning, it’s common for investors to settle on a big question like «should I have just one big diversified fund or a few separate ones?» I wrote an article on that also here: https://strongmoneyaustralia.com/dhhf-vdhg-on...

Hope that’s useful and if you have any other questions (or need anything simplified) don’t hesitate to ask!

Cheers, Dave