The easy investing strategy you didn’t know aboutThe easy investing strategy you didn’t know about

Of course, this doesn’t mean you forget about your investment entirely! It’s useful to check in now and then to review your Portfolio and decide what to do with your dividends if you receive them. This strategy is one way that can help you stay on track in between check-ins and reach your financial goals. 

Easy investing, on repeat

With over over 10,000 investments on Sharesies, you might not know what you want to invest in. Auto-invest gives you the option to create up to three DIY orders from a range of NZ managed funds, as well as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and companies listed on New Zealand, Australian, and US exchanges. There are also a range of pre-made orders for you to consider.

Auto-invest makes it easier to invest regularly. Once you’ve picked your order and set up an automatic payment, the entire buy process is automated—from topping up money from your bank account, to making an investment in Sharesies. (Time to kiss those phone reminders goodbye. 😘)

Dollar-cost averaging

This is an investment strategy we’ve mentioned before—by investing the same amount on a regular basis, regardless of what the share price is, you can average out the ups and downs of the share market (rather than catching the market at a specific high or low point). You might buy shares at a higher price one week, and at a lower price other times, but these can even each other out over time. 

This saves you the trouble of trying to time the market—which even the best investment professionals struggle to do! 

You can’t miss what you don’t have

If you pay PAYE income tax, you probably roughly know how much money lands in your wallet each payday, but you might have a less clear idea of how much you’re paying in taxes, ACC levies, student loan payments, and KiwiSaver contributions each pay cycle. That’s because you never really see these payments going out of your account. You pay them before your money reaches your bank account so it doesn’t feel like you’re paying them, even though they go out like clockwork! 

The same principle can apply to your investing. If you set the automatic payment for your auto-invest order to go out the minute you get paid, you’re less likely to notice it’s gone. This means you can work towards your investment goals without having to adjust your day-to-day spending too much. 🛒

Build up over time

Your investment goal may be big, small, or somewhere in between. But no matter how large it is, investing regularly can help you steadily work towards it by breaking your goal into smaller, more regular amounts. For example, if you set an auto-invest for $20 a week, you’d have invested over $2,000 in 2 years—and possibly more if you get compound returns along the way.

Wrap up

Now that you know what the ‘set-and-forget’ approach is all about, you can put your knowledge to work! If you want to give auto-invest a go, log in to Sharesies, choose an order, set up an automatic payment from your bank to keep your Wallet topped up, and sit back! Be sure to check in every now and then—it’s about forgetting for now, not forgetting forever.