TORONTO – Investments seem complicated, but they don’t have to be! Do you invest your money? If not, do you know how? This week on Building Better With Brandon we’re talking about investments. We headed over to York University to see what students are saying about investing!
Unsurprisingly, people had a lot of questions about growing the bag! What would happen six months from now if you were to invest some money today? Where does your money go when you invest it? How can you make an informed decision about investing? These are all common questions, and we sat down with Faith Biyapo of TD Bank Group to get some answers.
“It’s very important that you invest your money because money that is not invested basically loses value over time due to inflation,” Biyapo explained, adding that there are lots of ways to invest.
How Can People Start Investing?
“The first step to take is to make sure they have a financial plan,” he explained, adding that he advises speaking to a financial advisor.
He said there are two things you first need to consider when thinking about investing: your equities and your fixed income.
Equities are a security representing partial ownership of a publicly traded company. Purchasing shares makes you a shareholder and gives you proportional ownership of a corporation.
Meanwhile, fixed income investments provide a fixed rate of return for a set period of time. Whether through bonds, GICs, or money market instruments, fixed income securities have less correlation with the stock market than equities.
“Equity is basically your stocks, you know? You buy a small share depending on what you can afford. Maybe small or large sharing companies,” Biyapo explained.
“A GIC is basically a guaranteed investment certificate, basically it guarantees you a fixed return on your investment,” he continued.
Biyapo says there are reasons that some people prefer the “equity option” over the “fixed income option” when it comes to investing, and vice versa!
”It depends on their investment preferences. Some people want to invest for the long term, some people want to invest for the short term, some people want to invest for a fixed period of time,” he explained, which are all factors to consider when deciding how you want to invest your cash.
Other things to consider include different risk levels when it comes to investing, which can also help determine how you want to invest.
When you put your money into a TFSA to be invested, there are a variety of different ways you can grow the bag.
“Their investment can either go to equities, which is stocks, or into a mutual fund,” he explained, adding that the client actually has to choose to invest the money as it’s not automatically invested once deposited into a TFSA.
TD Tools for Investors
TD also has some great tools, including the online TD Learning Centre. It includes vital information for people looking to invest.
It’s basically a cutting edge platform that provides investment knowledge and education so it helps people who want to advance their knowledge on investing,” Biyapo says.
They also have something called the TD Easy Trade, which allows investors to trade without a minimum balance or monthly fees.
“They also get 50 commission-free stock trades per year,” Biyapo added.
Brandon and Faith explored common mistakes while investing, some misconceptions that a lot of people have, and everything else you need to know about investments in this episode of Building Better With Brandon.
