€5 per week to invest

investingmam

Hello, I’m a lone parent to one 6 year old and I want to save €5 a week for him. But in the back of my mind I know it won’t be worth much with inflation.

i had a look at the revolut investing and maybe it’s too good to be true. I put €2 in it yesterday.

Do you think I should stick with the one company with my €5 a week, or what should I go? Or what would you do if you were me as I know you can’t give advice. Or would an Irish company be interested in someone with only €5 to spare. Possibly pushing it to €10 after the winter

Thank you in advance for any help.

Fiona

Hey Fiona

Fair play to you, what you're doing is brilliant for your son. I'm not fully sure if it's the same with shares but as far as i know when if someone was to buy crypto with Revolut you won't actually own it but you're buying an "IOU" from them (someone else might be able to correct me or add to that.)

Would you consider setting up an account with Degiro or something where you can buy Index Funds (like a large basket of shares) like the S&P500 (the top 500 shares in the USA). I'm not sure if you can buy fractions of shares or you need to buy full shares, but i would advise to save up the 5ers for a few weeks because the fees may swallow up the 5er on each transition. I think they might charge 3 euro depending on the type of share for a transaction ( no matter if its 5euro or 50000 euro)

AnF Chuckie egg

€5 or even €10 per week is too little to be putting into stocks or investments. Just stick the money into a deposit account, let it build up. Don't worry about inflation, it would take many decades for the money to become worthless.

The best investment is a rainy day fund for yourself to cover unexpected expense in the future. Nothing worse than not being able to cover and unexpected bill. Better still it would be nice to have a few quid extra put aside for a holiday in the future rather than some number in an account

investingmam

Appreciate both of your posts. Thanks for taking the time. I’ll have a good think about what to do. But Degiro sounds interesting to me and I could save my fivers in Revolut. I have a rainy day fund set up there; which could do as a holiday if there was no rainy day 😀 I am very good at budgeting but it is getting a lot more difficult with the times we are in.

Thanks again

Fiona

daheff

I'd suggest setting up an account with somebody like trading212 as it would allow you to buy fractional shares. Maybe if you can save whatever you can afford and buy shares once a month it would be more beneficial than buying smaller amounts weekly.

Also with T212 you can set up your own PIE- basically your own basket of shares in the proportion you want to hold. Investing then is as simple as I want to invest X amount into the pie and it does the rest for you.

investingmam

Thank you. I’m thinking about all the suggestions.

Shedite27

Hi, I'd also suggest trading212 for fractional shares. Degiro would require you to have the full €50 before buying a €50 share, trading212 allows you to buy .1 of a share every week and you get a full share every 10 weeks there.

I'd advise you putting the money into an ETF, that's basically a collection of goods rather than just one. So instead of putting all your money on one horse in the race that might fall/lose, you're betting on all horses. Over 20 years you can't lose (historically). VOO. Vanguard S&P 500 ETF would be the most popular.

Nothing is too small, €5 a month at VOO's historical growth rate is €16.7k when your child they turn 26

If you think they'd like to buy a house when they're 35, that'd be €46k

I'd love to have gotten that from my parents when I was househunting

Have a look at a managed fund rather than specific shares. There are funds that are labelled income (ie you get your profit back yearly) or else accumulation (ie your profit gets ploughed back in to purchase more) which in this case is likely what you want. I started with £40 (I'm in NI) a month and over the last few years increased it when I can. Be aware that most if not all funds will likely have a minimum payment. It takes the hassle out of it, you're letting someone else worry about how the fund is built and which specific shares are invested - so you invest in a global fund, or an Asian fund, or a FTSE fund, or anything else that you like the look of, etc.

daheff

Also @investingmam there are referral links for T212 where you can get a free share if you sign up via that link. If you want one from me let me know.

Free Share is allegedly up to 100 EUR in value, but more likely around ~10 EUR. But free none the less

**edit - or anybody else that wants a link PM me