Jess
Kia ora, my name is Jess. I'm from the external communications team here at the FMA. And you're joining me for another episode of Jess Learns to Invest. Today, we're gonna be talking all about shares with the wonderful Natalie Ferguson. Nat is quite a powerhouse entrepreneur. She started an investing platform that helped thousands of kiwis kickstart their financial futures. She is now a co-founder of Powrsuit, which is helping empower women in their careers. Thank you so much Nat, for joining me today. It's lovely to have you.
Natalie
Thanks for having me, this is gonna be fun.
Jess
It's gonna be so fun. Before we get into the topic of shares. Cause I've got quite a few questions to cover. I'm really keen to learn a little bit more about your background. And what made you think ‘I'm gonna start an investment platform?’ What made you think that there's sort of a gap in the New Zealand market for that?
Natalie
We had a little discussion about this before, but I don't feel like money itself is very interesting. What money can buy is interesting. And so when people say money can't buy you happiness, I totally disagree with that. I think we should swap the word money for freedom and then it changes the conversation. So I'm a very purpose values driven person always have been always been a bit stubborn, always been fiercely independent and always been drawn to a really big problem that has often had, like a lot of really, in my opinion, obvious solutions overlooked. So for a long time when it was finance it, it was very much relegated to those people who already had money, or who had education, or who felt comfortable with all the jargon.
Jess
I totally relate to that.
Natalie
They got everything and the rest of us kind of were left thinking it wasn't for us. And so when we started to think and as someone who's been investing even when it was so hard and you had to have like $1000 and I had to break it up with my family and to little pockets so I could afford to invest in order to cover the fee. I had done it for so long that I'd seen the benefits over time and so being able to give that access and having a technical background so I could see that we now no longer had the barriers we used to have that had left New Zealanders without access to financial tools, we could now launch something that allowed us all to take control of our money, build that wealth to generate that freedom and live lives how we wanted to live. Same thing with Powrsuit, is all about, is how we can all build the lives that we want to lead and remove some of those sort of artificial barriers or old barriers that no longer exist for us. But we didn't get told they no longer exist.
Jess
Yes, I love that because I said it in, like every episode. I'm sure people are sick of hearing it. But like when I was younger, it was just never a thing on my radar and to be honestly now like later 20s. I'm like ohh this is something I should have been doing. So, when did you start investing like when and how did you even learn about it?
Natalie
Yeah. So, funny to try and remember, but I was very lucky and I think this is the hit and miss element of investing. I grew up with parents who invested in property. I didn't grow up with wealthy parents. My dad was in the military, my mom, as a result, couldn't really have a career because we moved around so much. But as a result, potentially of moving around, they did buy and sell houses along the way. They didn't have a big empire. They just maybe bought a house and then up cycled their house to another house. Yeah. So they only ever had, like, one at a time.
Jess
Just sort of fell into it and just started properly investing.
Natalie
Yea and then so it wasn't like a big thing, but it was something that I realised was doable and secondly, I think my mum's a bit of an entrepreneur in a different generation, so she was always figuring out ways that we could start little businesses or do different things on the side. So I grew up with the one factor that I think most of us had to have to be an investor, which was a family or role models that did it. That's it. That was it.
Jess
Yeah.
Natalie
Then I started my own businesses very young. And the big the first big investment I made and I remember this was like a Xero IPO and again this is not financial advice. I'm not even sure if I knew these rules existed back then, I said to my parents we need to invest in this IPO. So we I think it was a $10,000 minimum. So I think my sister and I had a bucket. I had a bucket and we bought a family package for like 2000 dollars.
Jess
Oh wow, that is pretty cool.
Natalie
It was something that was unaffordable for me to have bought the whole lot at the time. And of course, Xero went on to do amazing things and take over the world. And so, I sort of got the bug then. But like, like I say, look at all the barriers. It had to be $1000 I didn't know how to use an investing account like I don't even know if there really was one. We had to ring someone. It was all paper based. It felt very scary. Your money went into the ether and then like it must have been recorded somewhere. It just was not fun. It wasn't.
Jess
That's an insane amount of money. Cause in in my mind I just picture like yeah, men in suits and you have to rock up somewhere with loads of numbers, yeah.
Natalie
Yeah, people who don’t make you feel comfortable who seem to know everything, and you feel like you know nothing. So you’re sort of on the back foot. That was my first investment, and I remember at the time thinking, Oh, I’ve got my money sitting in a bank account earning like 4% interest. Then I saw this dividend fund and shares, and I was like, Oh, the average dividends here are 5%. So I thought, What if I use this as my long-term savings? I just got curious and started putting in—probably around $50 a week into this fund. Then I expanded out to other things.
That really set me up with this idea that investing isn’t a big one-off thing. It’s more of a regular habit an alternative to saving money. And if you’re thinking long-term, you do have the ability to try something a bit different.
Jess: Yeah, awesome. So today we’re going to talk all about shares. I feel like this is an episode I’ve had friends ask for they’re getting into investing and they’re like, Yeah, when are you doing shares. And I’m like, We’re getting there! It seems to be quite popular at the moment compared to other investment types.
So could you tell me what are shares? Like, just a basic-level definition?
Natalie: Well, firstly we use the word stocks, we use shares, we use all sorts of different jargon to explain the same thing. We used to say shopping for shares is the same as shopping for shoes: you’re buying something. That’s all you’re doing.
These days, you can buy shares online in the same way you’d browse ASOS and pick a pair of shoes. You use an online platform and pick a share to buy. And what a share is it’s actually in the name. It’s a share, or a slice, of a company.
So what you’re buying when you invest in shares is ownership of a company, which I think is probably why it’s kind of exciting for people. I love one of the analogies we used early on at my last startup. At the time, Tesla was huge everyone loved Tesla. It was this really cool company that was going to change the world.
Everyone was walking around with iPhones and MacBooks, wearing Nikes, eating McDonald’s. And the idea was: If you’re spending money on these things you love, why not invest in them and own a bit of the company? Benefit from the things you already enjoy.
So that’s all investing in shares is buying a share of a company and becoming an owner.
Jess: Yeah, it is cool when you put it like that.
Natalie: It’s pretty cool.
Jess: I can see why it’s hyped up over, say, bonds, managed funds, and all the other options out there. I think you touched on it a little bit, but I’m keen to know how you do it? So I know you said you can go online. I'm sure there's lots of different ways you can buy a slice of a company, but if you're a beginner, you've never done it before. You don't even know what to search. How would you go about buying a slice of a company?
Natalie: Can I go back a couple of steps there? Because I think there are a few things you can do and it’s different for different people. I’m a learn-by-doing type. Other people like to do their research first. There are heaps of platforms out there now podcasts like this one, books, blogs, all sorts of resources where you can learn the basics. Some go really deep and give you a bit of comfort.
The reason I say that is because these days, your first investment doesn’t have to be massive. Unlike my $10,000 in Xero shares, you can invest as little as a dollar. It’s really not a big deal.
Sometimes, because investing is a foreign concept to us, we tend to think, Oh, this is big and risky. I might lose all my money. I have to be really careful and do hours or weeks of research before making a decision.
I like to think of it this way: have a little read or listen to get some fundamentals if you want to. Or, the other way you can do it and what I’ve always encouraged is to ask yourself: What’s an amount of money I can afford to lose?
Something you’d spend on dinner or drinks out. Is it $50? $100? You might go out one night and blow that money on a couple of cocktails and some chicken tenders. You’re going to spend that money anyway, so it’s already gone.
Take that as your budget and say, This is all I’m going to invest. I think it should be more than a dollar, because you want to feel that tangible sense of, This could’ve been spent on cocktails or whatever, so you’ll feel a little sad if you lose it but it’s not big money.
Natalie: Then I’d start by asking: What’s something I already know? I listed a bunch of companies earlier we buy stuff all the time. So pick something familiar.
Sign up to a platform there are multiple out there. I’m not going to list them all; I’m sure you’ve mentioned a few. You sign up, go through some security checks your face, name, address, that sort of thing. Most of them are pretty seamless now because they want you to sign up. You get your money in, and then just like going on ASOS or The Iconic or whatever you search for something.
I’d suggest going in with an idea of companies you already like. Look at what you’re wearing, what you drive, the tech you use. Pick a company you love, one you spend a lot of money with. You probably should benefit from a bit of ownership. Just pick that. Don’t overthink it.
Jess: Yeah.
Natalie: Don’t feel like, Oh my goodness, there are so many options—how do I choose? Just pick something. It’s your cocktail money, it doesn’t really matter.
Make that first investment, and you’ll get a shopping high. Which is great, because we love a shopping high. Then you can just sit on that, and I recommend sitting on that for a month or so because what you'll do is. Because these tools. Are all online. You'll see the price go up and down. And you'll get used to like ohh today it's worth this. Tomorrow it's with this. Ohh wow. There was a news article that came out about this company. Ohh and then it dropped this and you'll find this sense of nervousness gives way to the sense of obsession. And again, you don't have a lot on the line, but. You have just enough to get pretty curious about it.
Jess
Yeah. And you don't have to look at your investment every single day.
Natalie
No, but you probably will at the start. You’ll probably get a bit obsessive about it. Over time, you actually get bored of checking constantly but it’s okay to start that way. You begin to realise that any little hiccup, whether it’s a cough from Trump, or something from China, or whatever can change the share price. And you start to go, Oh, I see how this all works.
Jess: Yeah. So it’s really great to know that you don’t need a lot of money to get started. You can have $5 or $10 coming out weekly, and that makes it manageable. Is that a good tactic for both long-term and short-term investors when it comes to shares?
Natalie: So I wouldn’t consider shares to be a short-term investment, and there’s a reason for that: the ups and downs. I kind of rage against some of the things we’re taught. One of the big one-liners I grew up with was, Don’t invest money you can’t afford to lose.
Jess: Yeah, yeah.
Natalie: But our KiwiSaver is in shares, so we’ve got a lot of money we can’t afford to lose in shares. That’s just reality. What we should actually say is: Don’t invest any money you can’t afford to be without for a long time.
You never want to be in a position where you need to pull money out of Apple or Tesla or whatever, because that might be a moment when the share price has dropped but you still need to pay your electricity bill. You never want to be put in that position. Because if money equals freedom, you don’t want to use your money in a way that creates more stress in your life. You just don’t.
So anything you’ll need in the next 5 to 10 years, keep that in term deposits or savings. Something stable. Your shares should be for longer-term goals. Things you can look at and say, I’m backing the long-term nature of this. And those little changes over time, you’ll notice they sort of go like this [gestures], and they go up and up and up. Not all the time, obviously, but you do—
Jess: Hmm.
Natalie: see that trend over time.
Jess:
Yep. And if you've got it in there for the long term, hopefully those drops aren't gonna make you nervous or anxious because you don’t need it right now.
Natalie: You don't, and it's sort of got that sort of curve up. So the drops actually over time don't always make you lose money. They just, yeah, make you use, you know, slightly less.
Jess: But it looks scary, doesn't it? And you, I like that you talked about like picking companies that you already spend money with, or that you like, cause I was gonna ask, like, how do you choose? Cause it is. It is really hard. There's so many options. And is it one of those things where, like you don't wanna put all your eggs in one basket would you have a couple of shares in companies that do different things like how would you go about that? Cause that seems the most daunting to me it's the picking.
Natalie: Yeah, no, absolutely. So I reckon you've got 2 strategies. 1 is getting up and running and the other is long term getting up and running. You wanna be experimenting. You wanna be learning, you wanna be figuring things out with small amounts of money. So you might have a budget like an X percent of your salary or a small amount that you go. This is my education, money. And I'm gonna, if you're like anyone else I know who started investing, you might pick 10 different companies and you're gonna go on a shopping spree. If you discover a new great clothing brand or whatever it is like you’re going to do that that fun, short-term stuff. What tends to happen is your interest peaks, and you check your investments madly every day. But over time, life gets in the way. That leads to your second strategy: investing should actually be pretty boring. If you’ve got $100 a week, you might put away $80 or $90 into set-and-forget investments. These should be very diversified—spread across lots of baskets. You’ve got your eggs in all sorts of places.
The returns on those, or how much they go up and down, should roughly track overall world economies or big economies. So you’re not stressing about it. That money is effectively your safe money—the world would kind of need to blow up for you to lose it.
Then your 5–10%, or maybe 10–15% depending on how involved you want to be—that’s where you can pick individual companies. You might say, Oh, I want to invest in this company, or I’m excited about that one.
You really don’t want to have too many.
Jess: Yes.
Natalie: You can, if you want to. If you’re a really engaged person who wants to pick a thousand different companies to invest in, go for it.
But most of us tend to go, Oh, there are just a couple I really back.
For example, my parents are mad cruisers—they love cruising. And some companies actually offer shareholder benefits. The cruise company they travel with does.
So one Christmas, we bought them shares in that company. If they hold a certain amount of shares, they get credits every time they cruise.
Jess: Yeah.
Natalie: So that’s one company. They don’t invest in a lot of individual companies, but for them, it really stacked up. They get excited about it, they get rewards from it—and cruising has gone through some very odd times in the last few years.
Jess: Yes. Yeah, that’s so cool. I was going to ask—can you buy shares as a gift? It sounds like you can?
Natalie: In some places, yes. I think in some cases you can. We probably did it unofficially—gave them money to set up their own account, and they did it through that. There are a lot of protections in place to make sure people aren’t laundering money and all that, so it depends on the platform. That sort of stuff. But you know you can unofficially give someone $300 and say, put it, it's a gift certificate an official gift certificate. Go buy yourself some shares.
Jess Such a really great idea. Whenever I'm stuck for gifts now, I'm gonna be like, OK — good idea.
Natalie Oh, I'm a huge fan of that. The exception to that is kids' accounts. A lot of these platforms have accounts specifically for children, and I saw some research the other day that said if you gave every baby $1,000 when they were born, they’d have something like $200,000 by retirement. Something crazy — all because of the compounding nature of returns.
And I just think, what a great gift for a one-year-old who really doesn’t care about the wooden spoon or the rattle. Put $50 into their investing account — you’re giving them such a big gift.
Speaker No.
Jess That’s awesome. And they’ve got the time, obviously. So they just get the reward when they’re older. It’s like — that’s...
Natalie Awesome. Yeah, absolutely.
Jess And for a new investor, how would they figure out if shares are right for them? Does it come back to what we talked about earlier — strategy, and looking at when you need your money before you start doing anything? Like, come up with your why?
Natalie Yes. And I think the reason I really like shares for a new investor is because it’s actually not a steep learning curve. That’s a big myth we need to move on from.
Part of the problem is the jargon. There’s so much jargon in investing, and it’s all concepts we already know. It’s ridiculous — returns, diversification...
Jess I think that’s what put me off to begin with. It’s just like...
Natalie Yeah, dividends — all of these things are actually everyday concepts. We all know them. We deal with them all the time. It’s just a matter of seeing through the jargon and going, oh — this is actually very straightforward. There’s not a lot of crazy stuff here. They’ve just created all this language around it that none of us should need to know.
So I think the reason shares are really useful when you’re starting out is they’re a shortcut. You learn all of that stuff. You learn the squiggly graph line and why it goes up and down. You learn how to buy. You learn the difference between buying and selling, and the costs involved.
I remember very early on, I used to have some friends around and we’d talk about the things we’d invested in — which I highly recommend. If you’re a new investor, get a group of friends together and just talk about what you’ve invested in. We’d go off on all sorts of tangents, like, “Oh, this news story happened,” and then I got really interested in the company behind it.
You just start to go, oh — I’m learning all this stuff. And it makes it so much more interesting than a boring fund, which you should be putting a lot of money into. But if you’ve never invested before, start with something that’s going to get you really engaged and excited about learning.
Jess Yeah, that’s such a good point. Yeah.
You can do that. You’re allowed. And if you’re starting to invest thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands — yeah, that’s a problem for another day. You can totally change your strategy then. But you don’t need to start with the strategy you’ll use when you’ve got real, real money in the game.
Jess Yeah, that’s a good point. And would you say you don’t have to know everything before you start investing?
Natalie Oh, please don’t wait to know everything. I’m a learn-by-doing kind of person. But also — you’ll never learn everything. You just won’t. And I genuinely mean this: you cannot read your way to understanding the feeling of when your share price drops.
There’s no amount of research that can prepare you for that feeling. And there’s no amount of research that can help you figure out the tactics you’ll actually use in that moment.
Jess There’s also regrets.
Speaker Yeah.
Natalie Exactly. One of the best tactics is — instead of hitting “sell,” which a lot of people do — talk to your friends. Say, “I’ve had this panic attack, this thing’s happened.” You can’t learn until you actually do. It’s like most things — you have to try.
Jess Yeah, I’m like that. I’m quite a visual person too. I’ve got to see it, got to see how it works to understand.
And we talked about terminology — “diverse portfolio” is something you hear all the time. What does that mean, and how do shares play into that?
Natalie You’ve already told us what it means — putting your eggs in lots of different baskets.
Jess Oh, look at me.
Natalie That’s all it means.
Jess I’m learning.
Natalie So let’s say, for example — and I’ll use this because I did invest in Tesla — I invested in one car company.
Let’s say I have $100 and I put my entire $100 into that one car company. All it takes is for someone in that company to do something dumb, or for there to be an issue with the car, and that company could go bust. That’s it — all my $100 is gone.
But if instead I go, “I’m going to put my money in a fund that invests in 10 car companies,” or “I’m going to buy shares in 10 car companies — $10 in each,” then if the first one does something dumb and goes bust, I’ve still got 90% of my money sitting there.
I’ve reduced my risk by not putting all my eggs in one company.
From there, I could even go beyond just cars. Why not invest in a whole economy? Now I’ve got my $100 spread across 1,000 companies. Even if 100 of them go bust, I’ve still got a huge amount of money working for me.
So over time — maybe not when you start, but over time — you get to decide: do I want to put all my eggs in one basket, two baskets, ten baskets, a thousand baskets, ten thousand baskets?
The more baskets you have, the more likely it is that any random thing happening in one area won’t impact you. And the closer you get to “the whole world has to melt down” before you really have to worry.
Again, in the long term, if you panic and sell, you’re going to get yourself in a pickle. But that’s not the share market — that’s just panic.
Jess Yeah, I love how you put that. It’s quite simple and easy to understand when you think of it like that. But there are so many terms — I just feel like it’s overwhelming. Like “risk” is one of them. So what are some of the risks with shares, and the positives and negatives?
Natalie Oh gosh, yes.
Jess Good luck with that one.
Natalie Your two biggest risks? One — doing nothing and not investing in shares. And two — panicking when you do. Those are the risks no one talks about.
We talk a lot about the risk of the share price dropping...
Jess Yeah.
Natalie But there’s so much research showing that if you put your money in a bank account — especially your long-term money — you’re actually losing money. That’s because inflation tends to be higher than your interest rate. That’s the biggest risk to you as an individual.
The second risk is panic. I remember the 1980s share market crash. People said the share market was risky because they lost all their money. But what actually happened — and this happened again in 2008 — is the share prices dropped dramatically.
In the 1980s, yes, there were some cowboy companies and dodgy stuff going on. But let’s say you were investing in a normal company. In 2008, if you’d invested in Apple, its share price was decimated — dropped right down to almost nothing.
If you didn’t sell, what happened over the next 10 to 20 years is that the share price came back up and overshot where it was before. You hadn’t lost anything — as long as you held on.
But if you waited until it hit rock bottom and said, “Ah, I’m out,” and sold — then that’s the amount you get back. You’ve locked in the loss. You can’t recover from that.
So those are the two biggest risks. That’s why I always say: anything less than five to ten years, you don’t want to be in a position where you need that money. Because it can take time to recover — and that’s okay. You just keep chipping away, keep adding money. You’re buying shares cheaper when prices are low.
The other big risk is what we talked about earlier — putting all your eggs in one basket. That’s fine when you’re starting out and learning. But when you’ve got serious money in there — money is freedom. You don’t want to be lying awake at night thinking, “Oh my goodness, is Google going to be taken over by AI?” because all your money is sitting in Google and your whole livelihood depends on it.
You just don’t want to be in that position.
Jess Yeah. And you talked a little bit there about selling. I didn’t realise you can actually sell. So say you need the money — I always thought of it as just taking your money out. But is it that you sell your share? Like you have a slice of that company, and you sell it?
Natalie Let’s go back to the shoe analogy — actually, handbags. I’ll use handbags because we love handbags. At the moment, everyone’s talking a lot about Birkins...
So you buy a Birkin.
Jess: With a Labubu.
Natalie: Ok, let's do Labubus. So you buy the Labubu and you spend 5 bucks on it and you own the Labubu.
Natalie
Let’s say it cost you $5. Then suddenly Labubu becomes a thing — for some outrageous reason, which sometimes just happens. I mean, Labubu’s probably a company, I’m not sure if it’s listed on the share market.
But let’s say that one Labubu you bought in a shop for $5 is now worth $10,000 because you lucked out and got the most popular one.
Jess I wonder. Very interesting.
Natalie So when you sell that, you’re still just selling the one Labubu. You spent $5 on it, and you sold it for $10,000. That’s it.
It’s the same with shares. When you buy one share, you own that one share. You might have spent $5 on it, and now it’s worth $10,000. You sell that one share, and you get what it’s currently worth.
Jess OK.
Natalie It’s exactly the same as anything else we buy and sell.
In some cases, you might buy a Labubu, miss the peak, and then realise they’re just hideous random dogs — and now it’s worth 50 cents. If you decide to sell it then, you’ve still sold the same thing. It’s just worth less.
Jess Yeah, yeah. OK, that really helps me understand it. So it can change in price and go...
Natalie Up and down. Yeah.
Which — just so you know — everything can. Like property. We often don’t think of it as the same kind of market, but it is. It’s just that we don’t publish property prices every two seconds.
Jess Yeah, it’s interesting that we don’t actually...
Natalie Yeah, but it’s exactly the same thing. Everything fluctuates.
Shares in particular — the prices are published so quickly that we see it all the time.
Jess Yeah. And do you have any tips for people who panic when they see those numbers dropping? Because especially at the moment, there’s that big thing, right? All this market volatility...
Natalie Yes — and that’s what leads to one of the big risks. We panic sell. That’s where people really lose money, and then they tell everyone the share market is risky. Which puts the next generation off. So don’t move around. First tip: you’re allowed not to look. You don’t check your property price every day. You don’t have to check your share price either.
You’re allowed not to look. Seriously — you can change your password, put away your verification codes, whatever it takes, and just stay away for a while.
The second thing you can do is talk to your friends. I genuinely think that’s a good idea. Say, “I’m feeling a bit wobbly — can you help me talk it through?”
We had an investors club at our last startup, and people would come in on those days and say, “I’m panicking,” and others would rally around and say, “Let’s pay attention, let’s talk it through.”
The third thing you can do — if you’re a researcher or just curious — is check the news. Ask yourself: is this a problem with the company itself, or is it just all the chaos happening in the world?
We know oil prices, global conflicts, geopolitical tensions, interest rates — they all impact the market. So is it the company, or is it the market as a whole? That can give you a bit of comfort too.
There are all sorts of tactics you can take. But the worst one — the absolute worst — is selling when you’re in a panic.
Yes, you can sell at any time. But if you do some of those things first — talk to someone, sleep on it, check the news — it’s very rare that selling at a very low price is a good idea.
And actually, in the rest of our lives, we know that. The worst thing you can do when you own a car is sell it for the lowest possible price. We understand that logic.
It’s just that the big red line and the scary low numbers make us behave irrationally sometimes.
Jess Yeah. Sometimes it’s good to sleep on something before actually acting on it.
Natalie Exactly. And that’s why I always say — two different strategies.
When you’re starting out, you might feel that panic and sell. Maybe you lose $20. But you’ve learned something. That’s OK. Don’t beat yourself up about it.
The whole point of learning to invest is that you’re going to make some mistakes. No one can time it perfectly. No one gets everything right. That’s a myth. You’re not going to do it.
Jess Yes, yes. And you talked about all these different ways to get shares — apps, websites.
How do you know they’re safe? Like, how do you know you’re not investing in something that’s a complete scam and you’ll lose all your money? There’s just so much out there.
Natalie Yeah. So coming at it from a New Zealand context there are some New Zealand companies, and the great thing about them is that they’re regulated here in New Zealand.
That’s a feature.
And I know sometimes in life we want shortcuts. Like when I’m signing up to Instagram, I want the smoothest, fastest experience. But there’s actually some benefit to having a few barriers when signing up. It helps when companies that take your money have to jump through hoops to make sure they’ve got the right protections in place.
There’s a very technical process behind the scenes with where your money sits, Where the shares are stored — like, you own your shares, but you’re not handed anything physical. It’s all digital, and it has to be stored somewhere.
They shouldn’t be stored in the same place as your money. So there’s all that sort of stuff that, in New Zealand, is really well regulated.
These companies generally have very clear terms and conditions that explain how it works. You probably don’t need to do a crazy amount of research if you’re investing through a company that’s registered in New Zealand.
The other thing I’d look for is anything that feels too good to be true — and this is just good general investing advice.
If there’s a platform offering something like “10% fixed returns” and there’s no information, or you have to be invited into a club — alarm bells should be going off.
Investing should be boring. It should be well regulated. Your money should be looked after.
Greed is another thing that can get us into trouble. You just want a reasonable amount of money that a reasonable company can make for you.
Jess Yeah, that’s a great slide.
Natalie So yeah, I’d say just start with that. There are some pretty good brand names out there that we all know.
You can do a quick Google or ask ChatGPT and get a few reviews on them.
Jess Yeah.
Natalie It’s pretty easy these days to look up a company name and check for scams. And I presume the FMA will always help with that too.
Just don’t overcook it. We’ve got some good platforms — they’re household names. You can probably pick one of them and put your $100 in without too much stress.
Jess Yeah, yeah. We’ve got all our data on there.
In some of these apps — the big household names — I’m guessing it’s quite easy to go in and track all your investments? They make it simple, because like you say, you don’t have anything physical. So it does feel weird just sending your money into their system.
Natalie Yes, but you can generally see how many shares you’ve got, how much the price has gone up or down, and the current value.
Depending on which company you’ve invested in — like if it’s Apple — it’ll be in US dollars because it’s listed on the American share market.
Most of that stuff is pretty seamless these days. Your New Zealand dollars get converted for you. You’ll see the value in US dollars, and there might be some complications with exchange rates changing as well as the share price.
But again, you learn that over time. It’s not that crazy once you get your head around it.
So yes, you should be able to see all that information in the apps and get a good sense of where things are at.
Jess Yeah, cool.
Natalie Yeah, just shake it off a little bit.
Jess Yeah. And we talked a little bit about choosing your favourite companies as a starting point.
But what if someone out there just can’t decide? I’ve had a little play in some of these apps — you can select packages, right? And it kind of does it for you. There are different ways you can do it?
Natalie Yes. Most of the investing apps these days offer shares in individual companies. I don’t know if you want to go into funds at all, but you can buy...
Jess OK, great.
Natalie ...shares in an individual company or there's a company that creates packages for you, They’re often called ETFs. If you’re investing in them through a share market, they’re called ETFs because a share market — or stock market — is also called a stock exchange.
All the same thing. Just multiple names for the same concept.
ETF stands for Exchange Traded Fund — you’re buying a fund through a share market. That’s all it means.
And there are so many cool ones. I actually really like these, and I think most of our money should be in these kinds of funds.
They have everything. Like, there’s one called the “Total World” fund — it buys shares in all the companies listed on all the share markets around the world.
You can just put your $100 in there, and you own a slice of...
Jess Whoa.
Natalie ...every company on every share market.
Jess So like, your money’s going out into...
Natalie Those companies — absolutely.
They buy all the shares, hold them in the fund, and you own a slice of that fund. So there’s stuff like that, and there are heaps of options.
They’re great because when we talk about diversification — having your eggs in lots of different baskets — these funds do that for you.
And honestly, if all the share markets in the world went bust and every company collapsed, we’d have bigger problems than our stock portfolios.
Jess Hopefully.
Natalie Exactly.
But there are also some really niche ones. These days, if you’re interested in crypto, you don’t have to invest directly in Bitcoin.
You can buy into a fund that handles all that for you.
Jess Yes.
Natalie Or maybe you’re into cruising you could get a fund that only invests in cruise companies. Or future tech. You can actually shop around and invest in an entire industry instead of picking individual companies. Like my one internet dating. You know how everyone’s on apps like Tinder? There’s a company called Match.com that owns a bunch of those platforms.
So I thought, “Everyone’s gonna be swiping — I’ll invest in this fund.”
Turns out... it went down. I think people have given up.
Jess Was it COVID?
Natalie That’s what I think — maybe people just got over internet dating. Or maybe those companies were overvalued at the time.
We thought it was going to be a bigger industry than it turned out to be.
But instead of investing in just one company, I could invest in a little group of them.
Jess Yes.
Natalie It’s a great example of me thinking, “Oh, I see this trend — maybe not everyone sees it.”
I was single at the time, and I saw a lot of my friends swiping. I could see the trend, even if my 70-year-old mum wouldn’t notice it.
And it’s the same with people who work in hospitals — they might notice a rising trend in healthcare and decide to invest in a fund around that.
So you can start to pick: “This is where I think the world’s going,” and find funds that align with that.
Jess Yeah, that’s really cool. I know ethical investing is also quite a big thing — so you can make sure you’re not investing in companies doing things you don’t support.
You can really start to pick what works for you and your strategy.
Natalie Yeah, absolutely. Which is kind of fun when you start — you get that feeling of, “Oh, I get to invest in the future I want to see.” That’s effectively what you’re doing.
Jess I love that. And with your example about the dating sites — when that didn’t turn out how you thought it would, what did you do? Did you sell it?
Natalie So I follow my own advice, I keep about 80–90% of my money in very boring investments. Those big “total world” style funds, not necessarily that exact one, but similar. The money I put into my interests, like niche trends, is relatively small. So first, it doesn’t stress me out. Second, I believe in holding.
One of the great things about companies and we all know this because we often work in them — is that they innovate, adapt, and figure out how to be profitable.
Jess Yeah.
Natalie So even if short-term trends change, I have faith they’ll figure it out. And it’s not just one company it’s a bunch of them. So you can kind of go, “I’m pretty sure that’s still going to be a thing.” But also, because it’s such a small fraction of my portfolio, it’s OK if I lose sometimes. Worst-case scenario and I’ve done this before, we all have — you sell because you think, “Well, that’s that.”
And then something changes and it rockets up, and you go...
Jess Yeah, yeah — websites just some...
Natalie Exactly.
Jess And I’m really keen to know what would your one big tip be for first-time investors? If they’ve listened to this whole podcast what is the one takeaway you want them to remember?
Natalie I would say: just start. We talk about this a lot at Powrsuit, power and influence are held in too few hands. When you don’t participate when your money just sits in a bank account or gets spent you’re not putting yourself in a position to take control of your life. And you’re not building the power and influence that we should all have. The only way to get started investing... is to get started investing. That’s literally it. So: start. Start small. Make it really easy on yourself. Try little things. Expect to make mistakes. Expect a few failures.
Don’t be embarrassed about it. Even Warren Buffett the investing god openly admits he doesn’t get it all right. You can look at news articles and see: no one gets it right all the time.
So just start.
And the great thing about investing is your knowledge grows as your money grows.
You learn the silly lessons early, and as you grow, you make fewer and fewer of them.
So you can just do it.
Jess I love that. Yeah. And it doesn’t matter what age you are. Just start.
Natalie Exactly. We know the stats I don’t know if you’ve heard this before Lotto winners...
Jess ...tend to go bankrupt?
Natalie Did you know that? It’s true. Because if you don’t learn how to manage your money on the way up, you won’t know how to manage it when you’ve got it. So the longer you wait for the perfect time, the more likely you are to fail when that time comes.
Start small. Start now. Talk to your friends. And you obviously are going to do it straight after this, aren’t you?
Jess
Jess Yeah, of course. I’ve already started looking at one of the apps, and I was like — there are so many different options!
But it really is so easy these days. It’s kind of a no-brainer to just give it a go.
Natalie Exactly. You can pick one thing this month, and another thing next month.
You don’t have to make the perfect decision right away.
Jess Yeah, I think that’s what put me off for so long I just didn’t know which companies to choose.
And then you see people online, influencers in this space, talking about what they’re doing. They look like they’re doing so great, and you think, “Well, I’m not like them I won’t be able to do that.”
Natalie Totally.
First don’t follow other people. Influencers’ job is to make themselves look great so you’ll follow them. They’ll talk things up. You don’t need to do that.
Second and this is something our brains don’t always grasp — investing isn’t a zero-sum game.
You can have totally different investments than me, and we can both do equally well.
So don’t worry about what other people are doing. You have your own secret sauce — your knowledge, your interests...
Jess We’re gonna put that in!
Natalie ...whatever it is that you can invest in.
And even if your investments don’t do as well as mine — say your $100 turns into $150 and mine turns into $152 — have you really lost?
It doesn’t matter.
It’s not about picking the best. It’s about picking something solid that you feel comfortable with.
Jess Things change so quickly.
Natalie Exactly.
There’s no one right answer. Once you realise that, it takes the pressure off.
You just pick what’s right for you right now.
Jess Yeah, you’ve gotta do what works for you — not just copy what other people are doing.
Thank you so much for today. I’ve learned a lot.
I thought I knew the most about shares, but after this, I feel way better about all the options.
You’re great at simplifying the tech side and not freaking people out about it.
Natalie It’s simple.
Jess We get it in our heads that it’s too big or fancy for us — but it doesn’t have to be.
Natalie I’ll believe you when you tell me you’ve bought shares!
Jess I’ll be like, “Look what I’ve done!”
Before we wrap up — could you tell our listeners where they can learn more about you?
Natalie Two places:
LinkedIn — super easy to find me there.
Power Suit — come join us at powersuit.com (without the “E”).
Power Suit is a very cool community of fabulous women taking control of their careers, learning great professional development skills step by step.
You’ll be able to invest in us through a share market at some point when we list — maybe on the New Zealand Stock Exchange!
Subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on LinkedIn, get in touch.
I clearly love talking about investing, and I believe more of us should start doing it.
I’m always happy to point people to resources, other podcasts — or just be your cheer squad if you’re starting and not sure what to do next.
That’s what we all need — to keep each other moving forward.
Jess I’ll take that!
Me and my flatmate are like that now — she’ll come in and say, “My managed fund’s got $12!” and I’m like, “Yes!”
You mentioned resources — do you have favourites you’d recommend?
Natalie Yes! I love:
The Curve
Friends That Invest — she had to rebrand from “Girls That Invest” due to an international trademark issue, but it’s still great.
I’m also a huge fan of FIRE — Financial Independence, Retire Early.
Check out Mr. Money Mustache — he’s one of the big names in that space.
There are lots of investing clubs and communities online.
Those are probably my go-tos — they all speak in plain English and break things down really well.
Jess Yeah, there are quite a few.
Natalie Subscribe to a few newsletters and you’ll start to see — they talk about investing in ways that are logical and relatable.
It’s not that different from what you already do.
Jess Awesome. And just start.
Natalie Just start.
Jess Totally. Thanks, Nat — it was so great having you on.
Thank you so much for listening. If you want to find out more about us, head to our website: www.fma.govt.nz and we’ll see you next time.
Disclaimer: The content of this podcast is of a general nature and is not financial advice. The thoughts and opinions of guest speakers are not those of the FMA. The FMA recommends that our audience seek advice about investing from a regulated financial adviser. The FMA does not accept any responsibility for loss that any person may suffer from following this content.
