Get Started Snapshot
Name: Tom “Malcom” Turnbull
Age: 19
Hometown & current home: Born & raised Adelaide boy (Go the Crows!)
Profession: Currently studying a Bachelor of Law & Commerce at The University of Adelaide
Favourite book: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
Most extravagant purchase: In the process of paying off a car (thanks to the bank of Mum and Dad for the interest free loan)
Favourite money-saving hack: CommBank Smart Savings feature!

What was your relationship with money like growing up?

I’ve always somewhat had a relationship with money. I recently ran into an old babysitter of mine and she reminded me that I would repeat the finance news to her when she was taking care of me! So I guess you could say I’ve been keen on the world of finance for a long time. Or maybe I just enjoyed the sound of Alan Kohler’s voice from a young age.

My Dad has probably been the biggest influence for me in the space as he is a financial advisor by trade. He has always been more than happy to teach my sister and I the value of money and how to make smart choices with it.

What was your first job? (And how much did you get paid?)

My first job was working at Grill’d. It was a short-lived role, mostly because I could hardly justify the long shifts for just $12 an hour. It was also a bit cheeky from Grill’d employing me on a Traineeship to pay me well below minimum wage legally! Whilst I certainly wasn’t taking home the big bucks, working at Grill’d opened my eyes to part-time employment and a real-life fast-paced workplace.

Other than Grill’d I did some football umpiring at my school for cash which was a nice way to quickly grab some spending money!

How did you first come across investing?

Growing up I had always asked my Dad about investing as I was interested in what he spent all of his time doing when he was at work. I remember being really keen to start investing myself and managed to strike up a deal with Dad that he would double my first $1500 investment when I eventually saved the lump sum (some excellent negotiating from myself I must say)

As I mentioned earlier, I was always interested in the strange looking red and green icons of the daily stock movements in the financial news, especially as the whole family had to be extra quiet for Dad to listen!

Was there a memorable early investment?

With my expertly negotiated initial investment doubled, I was advised to buy $1500 worth of Diversified United Investment (ASX: DUI) and MFF Capital (ASX: MFF) each. I still own DUI but sold MFF to buy Proteomics (ASX: PIQ). I originally bought MFF at $2.80 in 2021 and sold it for a loss in 2022 for $2.30. It’s now at $4.58, if only I had held MFF!

While it wasn’t the best financial decision to sell MFF, it has since served as a great lesson in holding growth shares like MFF and DUI. Not only holding growth shares, but also spending more time understanding the potential pitfalls of purchasing speculative stocks (not to say that it isn’t fun tracking the ups and downs of different announcements).

How are you currently investing and can you provide a breakdown of your portfolio?

At the moment I am investing an automated $250 a fortnight in DHHF, which I did learn about through listening to Equity Mates! I am currently trying to get my portfolio to a position I am happy with in terms of diversification, where I have a solid structure in place.

Here’s the breakdown of my portfolio at this point in time:

Where do you see investing taking you?

Ideally, in the long term I love the idea of financial freedom. Time in the market is the key and having been able to start investing relatively early has given me a head start that I’m really keen to exploit. It is an ambition of mine to have a family and be able to offer my kids a great start to life as I was so fortunate to get from my parents. I would love to have the freedom of retiring whenever I like, not necessarily continuing to work for the sake of it.

If you only had 25 words to convince someone to invest, what would you say?

Investing will not only provide a fun opportunity to follow an interest and attempt to gain financially from it, but also set you and the people you love up for an enjoyable life.

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The process of automation

Tom spoke about how he is currently automating $250 in the DHHF ETF. We spoke about the process of automation in our recent Get Started Investing episode titled ‘12. Automate It & Get Out of Your Own Way’ Check out the episode in the following links (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

Ren: So let's talk about how we automate our investments so people can kind of copy our system. So Bryce, why don't you start from where money comes in, to where money goes out and talk us through how you automate it.

Bryce: So I get paid into a bank account and from that bank account I transfer whatever my determined investment amount is straight to my brokerage account, and

Ren: That's an automatic transfer?

Bryce: That's an automatic transfer. I don't have to think about that. Then I have an automated system set up in my brokerage account where every month at the moment I'm saying to the brokerage platform, buy these four ETFs for this dollar amount, and then every month it does that, and then I get a text message or an email saying, ‘Hey Bryce, we've just bought X amount of units in these ETFs.’

So what I'm doing there is dollar cost averaging because it's the same amount every month and I'm not even touching it. I'm not even thinking about it. And so regardless if the market is at all time highs, or if the market is crashing, I forget that it's happening in the background. Then you look six months later and you've contributed all this money to your investment.

It's been so powerful because I remember early days when I would try and do that manually. There would be definitely times where I would look at it and go, maybe now's not the right time to invest. So regardless of how strong you think you are mentally at being able to overcome your cognitive biases, automating it makes sure that you take out all emotion.