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Jovan Lee

Edited 24 Oct 2021

General Investing

Planning to start investing but I still have many questions...

I'm a 19-year-old who has just gotten his first internship paycheck of $800!

I've been reading up about investing for a couple of months now and I feel that I'm ready to start investing, starting with $1000 (≈25% of my net worth) and then DCA a portion of my intern pay ($200) every month.

However, I'm not entirely sure how I should allocate my money. I plan to invest with: online brokerages, robo-advisors, crypto, and currently I'm thinking of splitting them 40-30-30 respectively. I plan to grow my wealth for the long term (>10 years) and I don't mind risker investments as I have set aside money for emergency funds and I'm very frugal (I rarely spend over $100 a month on daily necessities).

Is this a good plan to start testing the waters on investing, building my portfolio and diversifying?

How should I portion my investments if this is the right direction to go for?

Which online brokerage, robo-advisor crypto platform do you think would suit my situation best? (I'm currently thinking IBKR for broker, Crypto .com for crypto, and I'm tied between Syfe, StashAway and Kristal .AI for robo)

What specific type of investments should I go for? (I'm not comfortable starting off with individual stocks just yet so I see myself investing mainly in funds, I'm alright with stock funds)

Should I leave my emergency funds where they are right now (in a normal savings account with 0.05% interest) or should I move it somewhere where I can get higher but safer returns for them as well? (like POSB SAYE account or short term money market funds)

I want to learn to be financially independent but I don't have many friends who I can ask for financial advice and my parents are very financially conservative and aren't the most financially literate either when it comes to investing so I'm pretty much navigating this all on my own but I still have many questions and I'm feeling overwhelmed so having some of my questions answered would really help a lot! Thank you!

Discussion (16)

What are your thoughts?

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Like other people firstly I’d say congrats to you for having a great start! (Yes you can never go wrong by STARTING)

Know that this journey is going to be very fulfilling and it can keep changing as you go further along and are able to understand yourself better on what suits you best. There are 100 ways to build wealth and invest but strategies do not mean anything if they don’t work for you, which depends very much on your mindset.

Back to your question, for a small account size, I think you can split into two portion. One is long term investing aka DCA a regular amount into ETFs/robos (many robos mainly invest in ETFs anyway). This would allow you to grow your net worth and reach a certain amount of money in X years. As your income grows plan to allocate more to it to expedite the growth of this pot of money.

Secondly, again for a small account size account, I do suggest that you start dabbling in trading as this is one of the ways to increase your income. Don’t go in with real money right away. Start with a demo account (aka not your money), give it a try and see whether it’s something you would like. And even if so, start with a very small amount of money that you are willing to lose. Once you get some profits from here, use it to add into your long term investing fund above, again to speed up the growth of that money pot.

Btw, there’s a lot of resources online sharing about financial tips, such as Seedly and IG. Check out my IG @richlifewithdavid where I share more on money mindset and money management hacks.

CommonSense Investor

25 Oct 2021

Certified Professional at Biotechnology and Gene Therapy Industry

Brother, just buy one share of $TSLA and forget about it

  • Yes, is good to test water when u have little to lose, so u will the experience when you handle tenth of thousand of dollars. Most of us make mistake starting off, and thats make us better investor

  • When u are invested it will train your mind to constantly look for opportunities.

  • Robo advisor can check in link below

https://seedly.sg/posts/robo-war-experiment-sep...

  • ETF can follow what Frankie recommend

  • Emergency fund leave in bank, dont touch. If you want to invest more, u need to earn more.

  • Is important to buy the right stock, but is more important to find the money to buy. You need to think of way to increase your income

View 2 replies

Hi everyone! Thank you so much to all of you for taking the time to give your advice and opinions, I really really appreciate it! I have taken all of your comments into consideration and I'll post an update on what I've decided to do soon!

Arman Mohamad

16 Oct 2021

Seedly Student Ambassador 2021/22 at Seedly

Hello Jovan, congrats on landing your internship and the gratification of getting and investing a po...

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