Get Started Snapshot
Name: Rebecca ‘The Golden Greyhound Whisperer’ Agar
Age: 33 Years Old
Hometown & current home: Melbourne
Profession: Sales Enablement Manager at REA Group
Favourite book: I Haven’t Entirely Been Honest with You by Miranda Hart
Most extravagant purchase: A Chanel Classic Handbag. I was fortunate that I worked for Chanel at the time but even with the staff discount, I paid $4.3k. Considering the same bag now retails for $19.7k…I feel I unknowingly made an incredible investment.
Favourite money-saving hack: While this isn’t a hack per se, it’s a tried and tested recommendation…Unsubscribe and Unfollow! It will shock you how dramatically you can curb discretionary spending by unsubscribing and/or unfollowing clothing, product, service-based content. No cheeky “sales” or flash offerings to lure you into making emotive or unbudgeted purchases.

What was your relationship with money like growing up?

Money wasn’t something that was discussed when I was younger, so I didn’t really understand it. Which is probably why when I started earning my own money I was disastrous and couldn’t spend it quick enough.

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

My first job was working at our local cinema. I was probably hired because my brother and sister were working there but I was so “too big for my own boots” and was fired within 3 months. I think I was earning $14 an hour which felt like so much money for my age.

How did you first come across investing?

The aforementioned brother and sister kept raving on about this amazing podcast and finance content they’d been following and recommended I listen and read as well. Naturally, they were talking about Equity Mates. I was super sceptical to begin with because really how exciting can finance actually be?? But after reading Don’t Stress, Just Invest, I was hooked.

Was there a memorable early investment?

I am going to sound like a total Pirate but the first thing I invested in was GOLD. It was my first individual stock purchase (I love an ETF) so it felt like I was cheating on my core portfolio but I wanted to invest in something with a bit of ‘razzle dazzle' and also something that I could hold for a long time.

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

I currently dollar cost average into DHHF every month and have automated that process through my online brokerage account. Set and forget, too easy.

Any splash cash or bonuses I get go into GOLD and then each year I opt into investing in my companies Employee Share Program.

Here’s the breakdown of my portfolio:

Where do you see investing taking you?

Choice, flexibility and control.

While I adore the thought of retiring tomorrow - the mortgage and my current stage of life doesn’t marry with that idea. But I firmly believe investing can help set me up to make bigger life decisions earlier, such as retiring or supporting my kids so that they never miss out on an opportunity because we can’t financially support it e.g. education, travel.

Or, and this is the ACTUAL DREAM, become a dog walker and rescue more Greyhounds!!

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

Investing is giving yourself the best possible opportunity to maximise your financial potential

Start now, be consistent and block out the noise.

• We want to hear your ‘How I Got Started’ stories. Respond to this email if you would like to be featured and we’ll get in touch!

Be sure to catch Rebecca as she joins Jess in the latest episode Get Started Investing. The pair chat about the behaviours and beliefs that were holding them back from investing and how they overcame them.

If you’ve been delaying investing or have someone in your life who wants to, this is the sign to start and go on the journey with Jess. (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

How to invest in Gold

Rebecca spoke about her love for investing in Gold, and we broke down how Australian investors can invest in gold in a previous episode titled ‘Top 4 Gold ETFs in Australia’ (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

Bryce: So how do we actually buy Gold? There are three key ways that you can invest in gold. First is through physical gold ETFs. The second is through synthetic gold ETFs, and the third is through gold miners. I should say that this outside of actually going out and buying physical gold yourself and storing it in a safe.

Alec: Yes. I mean rings, necklaces, Bryce you've got that fat chain that you always wear around the office. But other than buying physical gold, the good news is it's actually easier now to buy gold than ever before because of the stock market and because of some of these ETFs. So you mentioned there is physical gold, synthetic gold and gold miners. So gold miners are the easiest ones to understand. They're an ETF that owns companies that go and mine gold. Then you've got physical gold ETFs, that go and actually buy big bars of gold, put and them in a safe. The third bucket is synthetic gold ETFs. They try and track the price using options and derivatives. Our preference is if you want to invest in the price of gold, invest in the price of gold, don't invest in gold miners.

Bryce: So there are four physical gold ETFs here in Australia, Ren. There's the global X physical gold ETF (GOLD). There's the Betashares, gold bullion ETF (QAU), it is currency hedged, meaning that you'll take out all of the currency risk. There's the VanEck gold bullion ETF (NUGG). Finally there's the Perth Mint Gold ETF (PMGOLD). All four of them are backed by physical gold located in vaults around the world. In some instances I think you can actually go and redeem that gold yourself with the units of your ETF. So those are the four that we prefer.