A set and forget investor, Ryan is a Kernel team member and investor who started his investment journey after a few big realisations. As our Lead Front End Developer, Ryan is passionate about investing in green energy and future tech. He’s a new dad who is working towards creating generational wealth for his family.
Ryan’s financial journey is just getting started
Financial literacy wasn’t a part of Ryan’s upbringing with the exception of ensuring he had an emergency fund to fall back on. Looking back now and seeing how much potential he lost out on by simply putting his OE money plus house deposit in a savings account a few years back, he’s kicking himself.
Now that he’s learning from his mistakes, Ryan recently started his investment journey. Luckily there’s a lot more information and guidance available now compared to when he started out, so everything feels more accessible. Before, everything was a bit too verbose and confusing if you didn’t have anyone to explain it to you, in his words.
He has a couple of reasons for investing
Admittedly, Ryan says his goals are a little all over the place at the moment. Ultimately, he’d like to create generational wealth for his family, but for now, he’ll take being able to move into an area with a few great schools for his daughter…without drowning in a huge mortgage.
Kernel + Ryan, a match made in heaven
“Well, I signed up for Kernel when I was going through the interview process, ha!”, Ryan says.
What he loves about Kernel most is probably a tie between the core funds (NZ 20 and Global 100 Funds) and being able to invest in sustainable funds. He says it’s nice to be able to put his money to work in sectors that invest in green energy and future tech. Starting with the ‘core’ funds have served him well as a new investor too.
Currently, Ryan’s Kernel investments make up roughly 70% of his portfolio, with some money in savings, a few individual stocks and a little crypto just for fun. Sounds like a core-satellite investing strategy to us!
Ryan’s investing strategy is simple
Set and forget. Ryan prefers to set up an auto-payment directly to his investment account, then uses auto-invest to invest the funds of his choice. From here, he lets compounding interest do the heavy lifting.
He tried day trading for a bit but found himself glued to his phone far too much watching the market, hoping for success. A behaviour we’re not a fan of either!
As an investor, Ryan describes himself as still a fledgeling, but he has been pretty happy with his progress over the last few years. No promises he won’t share unsolicited investing tips over the dinner table, such as…
A few investing tips to share
If you’re new to investing and planning for your future, Ryan encourages you to do your research and talk to people you respect about the lessons they’ve learned. Ask for help when you read it and start as early as you can. Oh, and don’t get a 10k car loan!
Further, here are three lessons Ryan has learnt throughout his investing journey:
- The best time to start investing was yesterday, the next best time to start investing is today.
- It doesn’t matter how much you’re putting into your investments every week. Just making it a habit will go a long way.
- “Investing isn’t a personality. Please stop exclusively talking to me about Crypto.”, in Ryan’s words.
