VIDEO: Investing and Women's Roles

I recently did an interview with Tesla Youtuber, Daren Yoong, who also happens to be my colleague.

I wanted to talk about women and investing since it was International Women’s Day this week.

00:00 How Jeraldine Started Investing?

05:04 What Makes Investing Male Skewed?

06:48 What my Investment Portfolio looks like?

08:09 My biggest investing lessons

12:51 How do we decide who to listen to?

I felt like I did not manage to cover all the points I wanted.

Here are some additional points I wish I had a chance to share

Why should women start taking control of their finances?

Many women believe that men’s role is to look after growing the family’s wealth. However, it is equally important for women to step up in this area.

When women can do well in our personal finances, we can be a better team mate in the relationship.

This is because life will be hard and filled with unexpected challenges. When times are bad, we can pull our weight and cover for our partner and the family.

Additionally, having our own money also gives us freedom.

Say you find out your partner is cheating on you or starts to become abusive, you can easily leave and do not have to stay just because you’re economically dependent on him.

Imagine if we were born 50 years ago and did not have education or resources, it would almost be impossible to leave. And we’d have to submit ourselves to a lifetime of sadness.

It is easy to feel that men know better because some of them talk a lot about investing and the smart moves they make.

Everyone can talk a big game.

On many dates I went on, the guys would pitch their portfolio performance; revenue performance of his company and how much they plan to save by x age.

Of course, everyone is a genius in a bull market. Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.

It is consistency in performance over several years that really differentiates a good investor from others.

Read: How Warren Buffett Invests like a girl

Do not complicate your finances

One mistake driven people tend to make is to overcomplicate their finances. I have personally made this mistake as well by trying to explore tons of different types of asset class.

After a year of exploration, I realized it is best to really keep it simple. So many famous people like Morgan Housel and Steven Bartlett just invest their money into index funds.

This is the same advice that Warren Buffet gives, he suggests mostly investing in a low cost tracking fund and the rest in cash.

I realized doing this frees up a lot of mental bandwidth for myself.

Instead of analyzing companies, I really want to put more energy into things I find meaningful like helping to build AlphaSense in APAC; adding value to my audience as a creator; improving my healthspan and building deep meaningful relationships.

Why I choose not to angel invest

I brought up angel investing in one line during the video and wanted to talk more about it. However, we ran out of time.

I am quite involved in the startup scene and started exploring the world of angel investing about two years ago.

Many of my friends were doing it and it piqued my interest.

For a good 1.5 years, I really immersed myself in this space to try to understand it.

I took a course; won a competition where I got best investment thesis; attended a camp where I met many other investors and joined an angel syndicate to stay on top of deals and attended pitches by Founders.

However, at the end of this journey, I did not invest a single dollar.

I made a decision after exploration that it was not for me: High risk; too qualitative and needing to invest in too many companies.

This has really taken a backseat in terms of my priorities for now.

Ending off with one of my favourite quotes by Warren Buffett

Recommendations

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women worldwide, affecting 528,000 women annually and resulting in more than 270,000 deaths.

Cervical cancer is almost entirely preventable and treatable with the HPV vaccine, screening and treatment.

This week, I had my first injection for the HPV Vaccine. 

I am 32 years old and thought it was too late. I thought that the age limit was 26 years old.

I spoke with my doctor and learned that the Gardasil 9 vaccination is effective and approved for women and men up to the ages of 45.

Both men and women can benefit from this vaccine because HPV also causes anal cancer; throat and back of mouth cancers and genital warts

Take action today:

• Female Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents under 26 years old can enjoy subsidies and also use Medisave. Book your appointment here.
  

• If you are already above 26 years old, you can still get vaccinated. Though there are no subsidies, I always feel that health is something we should not save on. Book your appointment here.

I am a Singaporean tech worker and content creator. Every week, I share ideas on how we can become our best selves in our career; finance; health and relationships.

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