The book I grabbed because the cover looked interesting

I was in the library browsing the business section, this was back in 2019, I’ve always been interested in business, I was an serial entrepreneur looking for my next book fix, the one what would change it all, give me that light bulb moment and a ‘system’ that would make me rich somehow.

A book caught my eye because of it’s cover, black and gold and the title was compelling (for someone like me) ‘The Wealth Chef’. At the time I didn’t realise it was a book about investing. I thought it was somehow about cooking up money.

Let’s be honest, I thought investing was for other people

At the time the only thing I’d heard about investing was from a friend of the family who worked as an investment banker (investing billions of other peoples money), and another member of the family who had taken advice from a broker, invested most of their savings in some shares and nearly lost it all.

I didn’t think investing was available to everyone and anyone, especially not to someone like me. I didn’t have much savings and I thought that you had to have a couple of hundred thousand to invest in anything….minimum. I was so wrong.

The bits of that book that actually stuck with me

Once I’d read the book my eye’s were open to just how low the barrier to entry is and I started to think this investing thing might not be so hard afterall. It’s been 7 years since I first read the book and here are the bits that stuck with me.

1. PYF

This stands for ‘Pay Yourself First’.

The idea is that instead of saying ‘Weeelllll, I’ll see what’s left over at the end of the month then save/invest that’ you invest 10% of your earnings immediately you get paid and live on the other 90%, what ever that is for you. The principle is that you pay into your future, your pension, your pot first.

2. Investing is not the same as trading

Investing is passive, trading is active.

Investing in something means you invest (buy a chunk) and step back and let time do the rest (mostly). Trading is active where you buy and sell regularly always trying to buy low, sell higher. It means a lot of time and affort researching companies to invest in and trying to time the market.

3. Index tracker funds (overall and over time) tend to outperform individual company shares.

Have you ever heard of the FTSE 100? Or the Dow Jones?

These are index’s , it’s like they bunched together the biggest 100 companies in the UK and track how well they perform. If the FTSE 100 is doing well it’s an overall indication that the economy in the UK is doing well.

FTSE 100 = Biggest 100 companies in the UK

Dow Jones = Biggest 30 companies in the US

Let’s pretend the FTSE 100 Index Tracker Fund is like a cheese board. Imagine you’re at a party and there’s a massive cheese board. Like, properly massive – every type of cheese you could want. Brie, cheddar, gouda, that weird blue one your mum loves, the fancy French ones with names you can’t pronounce, and there’s exactly 100 of them.

Now, you could spend ages trying to figure out which single cheese is going to be the cheese. Which one’s going to taste amazing? Which one’s going to be worth the calories? You could research cheese markets, read cheese newsletters, stress about cheese trends.

OR.

You could just take a tiny bit of every single cheese on the board.

That’s an index tracker fund.

Instead of trying to pick the “winning” companies (cheeses), you just buy a tiny slice of hundreds or thousands of them all at once. In the UK, index tracker funds mimic the FTSE 100 – so you’re basically buying a microscopic piece of the 100 biggest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. All of them. In one go.

Some of those companies will do brilliantly. Some will be a bit rubbish. But overall? You’re betting that the cheese board as a whole is going to be pretty decent. Because historically, the stock market tends to go up over time, even when individual companies don’t.

The best bit? It’s cheap, it’s simple, and you don’t have to pretend you’re a finance expert to do it. You’re not picking winners. You’re just showing up to the party and taking a sensible, diversified approach to cheese consumption.

I mean, investing.

After finishing the book I knew there was an easy way to start investing…

So naturally, I did something about it.

I discovered that the author of the book Ann Wilson had a course – Passive Investing Money Mastery – and because I wanted to learn more before diving in I bought it and worked through it, took notes like I was back at uni, and realised I needed to do three things:

1. Open a SIPP (Self-Invested Personal Pension, because we love acronyms)
2. Hunt down all my old pensions like I was on some sort of financial treasure hunt
3. Actually start investing in those index tracker funds I’d just learned about

The pension tracking was… an adventure. Turns out when you’ve changed jobs a few times, you end up with bits and pieces of your retirement scattered everywhere like financial confetti. But it really didn’t take as long as I thought it would (always the way), got everything transferred into my shiny new SIPP, and then – here’s the moment – I actually invested in my first index tracker fund.

That feeling of clicking “buy”? Equal parts terrifying and exhilarating.

That feeling of ‘I’m actually in control of my money’ (a lot more than I used to be) Priceless.

Saying the words ‘Well, actually I invest in Index Tacker Funds…’ at my next family and friends dinner and getting impressed looks ….oh so smug (I’m not perfect haha).

This is not financial advice. I’m a marketing consultant who invests her own money and writes about it honestly. Always do your own research or speak to a qualified financial adviser before making investment decisions.