Our Favourite Investment Tool

We’ve always known that in order to make this travel lifestyle work long term, we need to make smart financial choices. Not only for the short term but also for the long term, and that’s why we’ve always invested our money. Our focus has mostly been in real estate, but about a year ago we decided to get our foot into the global market with an investment portfolio. Because it can all be a bit intimidating and overwhelming, we did a lot of research to find the best fit for us. We knew we wanted to work with an online service rather than a traditional financial advisor, because we like having easy access to our accounts. We also knew that we wanted a portfolio that was fairly low risk, very diversified, and that wouldn’t invest our money in causes we don’t believe in. After a lot of reading, we came upon Wealthsimple and have been using it now for one full year. We moved over our retirement savings accounts, and we each opened a personal investment account. All of them have generated earnings over these past 12 months. Even with the market fluctuating and having some very low periods over this past year, we still made significant earnings. We are definitely going to continue using this service and we highly recommend it!

What is Wealthsimple

Wealthsimple is a Canadian online investment management service that specializes in “robo investing”. The company’s financial advisors invest your funds (with no account minimum) in a diversified portfolio, and their technology maximizes your earnings with automatic rebalancing, dividend reinvesting, and tax loss harvesting. Their online service is available in Canada, the US, and the UK, and offers a low fee alternative to traditional investing. All you do is open the account, and everything is handled for you. One of the things that really attracted us to their service, is Wealthsimple’s socially responsible investing. This allows you to choose a portfolio that invests in initiatives that align with your values when it comes to environmental and social impact. Another specification you can make, is what risk level you’re comfortable with. You can tailor everything to your individual needs, and your custom portfolio will be designed to help you meet your personal financial goals.

Why Investing is Important

Whatever it is you’re saving for, the best time to start investing is now. Especially for reaching your long term financial goals, research has shown that passive investing is the best way to grow your money. Staying the course during market fluctuations, and choosing the risk level that you’re comfortable with, is going to be the most effective way to profit over time. The nice thing about Wealthsimple is that there are no account minimums, so you can literally start with just your spare change. There are options to turn on auto deposits, or you can just move over extra cash when you have it. There are also no fees to withdraw your money at any time. If you’re interested in opening an account, you can click here to get your first $10,000 managed free for a year.

We don’t consider ourselves experts in personal finance, but we are trying to be really open to our community by starting these conversations about money. We believe in having healthy and productive discussions about wealth and finance, because it strengthens our relationship with money, and helps to break the stigma surrounding the topic. If you’re interested in learning more about how we’re working on financial freedom, head to our post about our strategy for financial wellness.

What are your favourite investment tools? Let us know in the comments below how you’re saving for the future, and share your personal experience with investing.

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this blog post may be affiliate links. This means that at no additional cost to you, we could make a small commission through your purchase. We only recommend products and services that we truly believe in, and the income generated goes toward creating more content on this website for you to enjoy for free.