[00:00:06] Viktoriia Miracle: Hello. Hello and welcome back to happy time happy money podcast with Viktoriia Miracle and today we have Michelle Hung. She's an author and founder of The Sassy Investor. She has taught thousands of students and clients how to invest in the stock market and build long term wealth. She graduated from the university of Waterloo with a math degree majoring in finance.

[00:00:36] And is also a CPA, charter holder - a globally recognized investment management designation. Prior to The Sassy Investors, Michelle spent over seven years working in investment banking and venture capital in Toronto. Wow. Hi and welcome Michelle.

[00:00:58] Michelle Hung: Hi Viktoriia. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm super excited to be here to share some knowledge and, you know, spread the, basically spread the wealth of knowledge.

[00:01:08] Viktoriia Miracle: Yeah, well, we all excited to hear more about stocks and investments. It's always so interesting, right? But before that, I would love for you to share how you got into that and what inspired you to do it?

[00:01:21] Michelle Hung: Absolutely. Well, basically I've been working in finance pretty much forever. Like I studied finance and straight out of school.

[00:01:29] I started working in investment banking, and then venture capital. And I realized one of the most common questions I was always getting asked what should I invest in? The most part as I was, I think it's like, which one should

[00:01:42] Viktoriia Miracle: I invest in which stock I should invest in

[00:01:46] Michelle Hung: same thing. What stock is good? What's good out there? And I, I brush people off. I'm like, I don't know. You figure it out yourself. Meanwhile, I'm investing in my, like, I'm building my portfolio and I'm like, you know what, I can't really talk about this because of the nature of what I was doing. And mostly, cause I didn't have time. Right.

[00:02:03] But after I was laid off from my job, after like almost seven years working full time, I had, you know, like a lot of life-changing events happened, but basically I was just so glad. I ended up with, I built, I amassed a six figure investment portfolio. So I had no job, my 12 year relationship, relationship had actually just ended.

[00:02:25] So I was pretty much divorced. So then I had to move back home with my parents. So all these life events were happening and then my dog fell really sick. So then I had to take him, excuse me, take him to the vet. So it's in and out of the vet's office and so it was like, it was just really like low times.

[00:02:43] And at least the one thing I didn't have to worry about was money. I didn't have to worry about not being able to pay for the vet bills. I eventually had to move back home with my parents, which is okay cause you know, like I was living with my boyfriend at the time, but I wasn't in a rush to get a job, to be settling for something I didn't want.

[00:03:04] I was able to take the time to basically reset my life and start, and just figuring out what I wanted to do during that basically in the next phase of my life. And one of the things I've always wanted to do was start a business and it just came, came to me where I figured I should just teach people how to invest.

[00:03:23] It's one of the most like a very common question I've been asked and most people don't know, like a lot of people don't know how to invest. So I actually started off wanting to teach people how to pick stocks. And then I figured, okay, most people should not be picking their own stocks. At first, but at the very bare minimum, instead of having money sitting in a savings account, which I found a lot of women had.

[00:03:47] What is the. What is the bare minimum they should be doing to put their money to work. And that's basically how the sassy investor got started. So, accommodation, you know, I need, I knew there was a need out there, but also, from my own personal experience, I certainly didn't want, you know, I want women to have financial independence to be able to rely on themselves, not have to settle for something they don't want, they don't a job that they don't want to be in, certainly not being in a crappy relationship and feeling that they need to stick around. So, you know, my mission was to just teach as many people, as many women as possible to build a lifetime of wealth, how to, how to teach them how to build financial independence.

[00:04:33] Viktoriia Miracle: That is a beautiful vision. And I mean, I have so many questions. So you mentioned that, people don't get to choose their own stocks at first. Why did you say so? So why are they. Well, it's say like, you got to pick one. Okay. I'll just tell you what I think, because I guess I get to put some thought into it.

[00:04:53] So a lot of people, a lot of financial advisors also say, just pick a company that, you know, and start invest in it. And you were saying the probably don't get to choose their own stocks first. So what, what's the, what's the balance?

[00:05:06] Michelle Hung: Yeah, it's I always say you don't, shouldn't be picking your own stocks at first, right?

[00:05:11] At the very minimum, do something else first. But the reason I say don't pick your own stocks versus because people will tend to, They'll follow news and what's hot. So if you remember GameStop or like AMC, Dodge coin, even a Bitcoin, if people were to pick some were, you know, if you told someone I'll pick something that you're familiar with and they're like, well, I've heard of GameStop and I'll be like, no, like there are better companies out there for like the, for the stock picking process.

[00:05:42] It is a process there's a little bit more work involved, you have to research the company, what they do, how they make money, making sure that they're going to stick around for the next 10, 20, 50 years. We're talking about long-term investing here. The longevity of the company matters, making sure they're not going to just die off in the next couple of years because it's just a company that's so short-lived, that's a fad and certainly not, and certainly avoiding things where, you know, GameStop in AMC where like people on Reddit were hyping it up and driving up the prices of the stocks so that it becomes super overvalued. And then when people buy in, they buy in at the highest peak at the highest point, the stock drops and then they never end up recovering their money like if they recover or they sell. And that ends up being a permanent loss. So that's why I say avoid that stuff first, because with individual stocks, you run the risk of going to zero.

[00:06:38] Viktoriia Miracle: Oh, you don't want to buy high. I know your new investors always say buy low, sell high. I mean, it sounds so obvious, but it's, it's like opposite psychology, when we were looking at the stock and it's going like, oh, it's going to grow. It's a great stock, but then there's always goes down after it's really high up. So what, what are the best investments for somebody that like you know, no idea on what is going on and they would love to start?

[00:07:02] Michelle Hung: So, what I always recommend to, to everyone is build your portfolio, your core portfolio around exchange traded funds.

[00:07:12] So ETFs for short. So basically what they are, they're just, it's a fund. So it's just like a bunch of a pool of investors. They have multiple companies like hundreds boutons of companies, so that you gain exposure to many, many companies across various industries. So not just tech stocks, a lot of people are always gravitating towards, you know, Facebook and Netflix and Shopify and Tesla, all those sexy technology stocks that are doing so well and everyone has heard of. You need a variety of like utilities, consumer staples, consumer discretionary, financials. And then, not just having a variety of industries in your portfolio. It's a various sizes as well. Right? Cause you want to make sure you have small, medium, large companies. The large companies are more stable.

[00:07:59] They're less likely to go to zero. The small companies are the ones that'll take off like maybe they're, you know, at a $2 billion, stage right now they're valued at $2 billion. Maybe we can go to 20 billion. So it just covers everything and making sure that your money will not go to zero. You know, five or 10 companies go bankrupt, you're still good.

[00:08:20] So it's much less volatile compared to investing in individual stocks. And the beauty of these ETFs is that some of them are priced very low, in the sense that like the dollar value. So for example, there are ETFs that can be 30 or $40 a unit, whereas, you know, A company like apple or Tesla, they're like over a hundred dollars, a couple hundred dollars app, like Google, Alphabet's, like in the thousands, which is out of reach for a lot of people if they're starting out.

[00:08:49] So people starting off with like 105 hundred bucks, their money can go a long way, making sure they're covered across various industries, many companies across the board. And so basically ensuring that their money does not go to zero.

[00:09:04] Viktoriia Miracle: Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you. And the last question I have for everybody on this podcast is please finish the sentence.

[00:09:12] If you really knew me, you will know that I am blank.

[00:09:19] Michelle Hung: So can you repeat that.

[00:09:20] Viktoriia Miracle: If you really knew me, you will know that I am blank.

[00:09:25] Michelle Hung: Really. If you really knew me, you would know that I am. Oh, my gosh, there was a word it's coming to me. I am lighthearted. Okay.

[00:09:47] Viktoriia Miracle: Love it. All right. Well, thank you. I know you've everything you share is so valuable and I know you have an amazing, amazing free master class to share more about your free gift that you have for our audience today.

[00:10:01] Michelle Hung: Absolutely. So there's a free master class. That's called how to build your six-figure investment portfolio, using the proven and best strategy. So it has a lot of golden nuggets in that, masterclass you'll know more about investing than the average person after you watch it. It's really valuable. It's packed with lots of information, lots of good stuff for you to take away from, especially for if you're starting out with investing. It's great for beginners.

[00:10:33] Viktoriia Miracle: Thank you so much and you always can find this on our episode page. Just it's happytimehappymoney.Com forward slash episode in the number of this episode in the number form. Oh, you can just scroll down. It's going to be a link there. So click there and you'll find all the links that were mentioned in all the contact information as well for you to connect and share any feedback or any thoughts.

[00:10:58] Please do a rate, review and like, or subscribe, whatever you're watching or listening to. It will warm our hearts. That's why we doing this for you and thank you so much, Michelle for coming and thank you everybody for listening or watching, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.

[00:11:19] Michelle Hung: Thank you. Bye.