This month's FMA Investor Profile features Te Kahukura Boynton, (Te Whakatōhea, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tūhoe) an 18-year-old Waikato law student on a mission to empower Māori to become financially independent through her investing and self-development platform ‘Māori Millionaire’.
Imagine being fresh out of high school and having your own diversified portfolio worth $15,000 and a successful online content platform aimed at making investing more accessible to Māori.
That’s what Te Kahukura Boynton has achieved – and all before her nineteenth birthday.
“I grew up reading books like Rich Dad Poor Dad, The Cashflow Quadrant and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” says Te Kahukura. “From there, I developed an interest in investing and making my money grow, which allowed me to start investing in KiwiSaver when I was 14, foreign exchange when I was 16, and Sharesies when I was 17.”
Te Kahukura now invests by drip-feeding $100 per week into a variety of ETFs and managed funds. “I like to invest in funds because they diversify risk among different companies.”
She says the best investing advice she’s ever received is two-fold: one, that there is no such thing as a get-rich quick scheme; and two, that there are benefits to using dollar-cost averaging, where you regularly invest a certain amount and buy regardless of whether prices are low or high, thereby smoothing out fluctuations.
“It's way smarter to dollar-cost average for long-term gains, as opposed to getting into risky and speculative investments which promote getting rich quick.”
“I like to protect myself by investing in non-speculative investments,” she says, “Investing for the long-term and with dollar-cost averaging, I’m able to ride out the lows and mitigate the risks of having to pull out during a low.
