Do you feel like you should learn to invest money but don’t know where to start?
English language teaching (ELT) is a hard-working industry not served well financially**. Educators and creative types like us tend to get left behind when it comes to money and finance.
With no pension, some savings dwindling in a no-interest bank account, no hope of ever buying a house, inconsistent income and low pay to show for 20 years of teaching and writing, I was going to be working til I dropped — and that’s if I was lucky.
Then something clicked: money can make money.
All I had to do was learn to invest.
Except I had no idea how to start.
But desperation is the mother of research, self-study, learning and self-improvement. Turns out investing is something anyone can do, even on unspectacular earnings, meagre savings and with no knowledge of finance.
Once I started investing, my only regret was not starting years earlier.
As an EFL teacher-turned-writer I know how to write great educational materials, and now I teach investing and personal finance instead of grammar.
With my portfolio all set up and my money working for me, writing a course to teach what I’ve learned was the obvious next step. The result is the chilled investor course — all you need to know to learn to invest and get started.
** to put it extremely mildly
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“Thanks so much for the first two sessions – really fabulous. I already feel a lot less panicky about investing, not because I know it all but because I feel like I’m starting to know what questions to ask. Sooooo helpful.”
A happy student on the beta course
Whether you have savings or think it’s time to start saving, I can teach you how to put your money to work so it earns money for you instead of just sitting in a bank account doing nothing, and worse, losing money because of inflation.
On the chilled investor course, you’ll…
Re-evaluate and understand what is and is not risky when it comes to money. (Spoiler alert: savings sitting in a bank account isn’t a risk of losing $$$, it’s guaranteed to lose you money.)
Lay the critical psychological foundations for not messing it up! Surprisingly, it’s not so much financial wizardry that separates successful from non-successful investors but the ability to stick with it and not !$%# it up that counts.
Plan a strategy for your investments. When you know when and how much to invest, you can “set it and forget it”. You’ll be a chilled investor, not a stressed investor.
Understand the fundamental principle of making money via what Einstein called the eighth wonder of the world: compound interest. (And, no, it’s not as complicated as his relativity thing.)
Acquire a bit of the lingo to demystify terms like index funds, P2P lending, REITs, ETFs. I promise you’ll be able to use the words “my investment portfolio” with confidence and without feeling like a ****er.
Explore different kinds of passive and semi-passive investing that you can set up easily and maintain without doing very much.
Be clear on if, or when, you actually need a financial advisor and how to make sure having one doesn’t cost you thousands and thousands of pounds in fees over time. (It’s that Einstein thing again.)
“Nicola’s providing a basic education which we should all have had at school and it’s empowering to learn that knowledge. On top of which, you will come away understanding why it’s a no-brainer to be investing your savings and have a clear set of options to choose from. Investing is a topic that many of us might suppose to be quite dry but Nicola is a very engaging teacher and I think it will surprise you how much you actually enjoy the course.”
Emma Grisewood, Head of Content, EdTech company, UK
“The best investment you can make is in yourself. The more you learn, the more you earn.”
Warren Buffet