[00:00:06] Viktoriia Miracle: Hello. Hello and welcome back to happy time happy money podcast with Viktoriia Miracle and today we have Mark. Mark is just your average guy who was always good at saving money, but if a few years ago he'll learn how inflation works and that saving wasn't enough. He realized that investing isn't an option to build wealth, but it's necessity to preserve your hard earned money.

[00:00:35] He started IG to help educate the masses on this important lessons that no one teaches you in school. He believes that financial literacy is more important now than ever before. Hi and welcome Mark.

[00:00:51] Mark Wlosinski: Thanks for having me on.

[00:00:53] Viktoriia Miracle: Absolutely, I would love to hear more about your story. How did you, you know, came to realization of that and how you start it on what you're doing in right now?

[00:01:05] Mark Wlosinski: Yeah. So, I mean, to make a long story short, I was lucky enough to have a, you know, a great family base that was very financially literate from a young age. They kind of taught me just like how to save and how to respect money and just like, think about your purchases like you know, do you want it or do you need it kind of thing?

[00:01:22] But the thing that they really taught me was just because you didn't need, it didn't mean that you couldn't buy it. You know, we weren't being that way. It was more just like having that mental decision in your head before you just go spending money. And the way that that affects your life is just pretty powerful especially when you start young because you start thinking about money differently, you start thinking about savings differently. And, you know, instead of thinking how much is something it's like, how long did I have to work to buy that something? So it's kind of like financial literacy, really in my point, it just kind of starts with a mental shift, right?

[00:01:54] Like just shifting your mental, to think about money differently. That's the first step and really taking some big steps towards a better personal finance life.

[00:02:03] Viktoriia Miracle: So what do you think, why do you say, you know, in your bio? When I was reading, there is, you said it's, it's more important than, than ever now. So why is investing important now more than that?

[00:02:18] Mark Wlosinski: There's a couple of reasons, to be honest. I mean, the first is going to be just because social media has normalized investing as well as like broker Japs, like Robin hood and, you know, they dropped commissions on trades, so it's just never been easier to start investing.

[00:02:34] But that's coupled with, it's never been more important to be smart investor because what we're seeing is all these, you know, they're real successes, but they're very, you know, Over oversold, I guess, you know, you see screenshots on Reddit pages and social media of people buying GameStop stop and AMC and Dogecoin and making thousands overnight.

[00:02:56] And while that is possible, that's not necessarily investing when you're investing or investing. I should say, into high-risk assets, it's more gambling than it is investing. And if you want to do that, that's fine, but you need to understand that's what you're doing. You can't think of these new assets with no backing as, you know, placing your money in a safe place for the future.

[00:03:18] If you want to, you can. But I think it's all about risk tolerance and risk moderation. There's proven ways to invest that for the long-term with dividends and just ETFs and index funds. There's just other ways to go about it. That's going to be a lot more consistent and safe for your hard earned money.

[00:03:37] Viktoriia Miracle: So what, where is the right places to invest? What do you recommend or what do you?

[00:03:45] Mark Wlosinski: Yeah. I mean, I, I personally love stock-picking and doing the research on the companies themselves, just seeing what makes a strong balance sheet, a strong management team. So, you know, in that sense, I kind of have some individual stocks, but for new investors who are just learning, it's really hard to go wrong with investing in the index is like an S and P 500 or a total stock market.

[00:04:08] Now I don't necessarily recommend that you make your entire portfolio that I love having additional exposure for additional growth. Especially if you're younger and have time on your side, but when you invest in the index, you're basically getting a basket of all the most successful stocks in the economy.

[00:04:25] And what's happening with that basket is every time they switch it up, they're going to replace the weakest companies with the newer up and coming strong companies. So instead of having to put in all that research and figure out, okay, like, what's the big deal? Like what do I have to pick this year?

[00:04:42] You're automatically being, having your money transferred into those names for you and the ability to become a passive investor in that sense and not have to spend all that time, doing the research, looking at charts, doing all that stuff. It's a powerful combination.

[00:04:58] Viktoriia Miracle: Yeah, it is, it is a pretty powerful and they feel like, you know, even though if you, like you said, don't create just a whole portfolio out of ETS, but you can also, if you don't know even where to start or how to pick a single companies, just look at the 500 S and P's and researched some of them and pick one or two or three, whatever you like and invest just in, straight into the company and not to S and P 500 stocks.

[00:05:23] Mark Wlosinski: Yeah, exactly. I just think it's like, it makes it easier. You know, like when you have corrections and bear markets and big stock market drops, the more names you own, the more cash you're going to need to average down those costs because you're going to be buying the dip, essentially. Whereas if you're an index fund, you're buying one thing.

[00:05:43] That is averaging down all of your company's holdings like you're getting broad exposure to the economy. And what I always tell people is when you're investing in an index, if that index goes to zero, you're going to have a lot bigger problems going on and where your money is, you know, the world's going to be in chaos.

[00:06:00] The economy is going to be collapsing like you're not going to be worried about your retirement savings in that scenario.

[00:06:07] Viktoriia Miracle: Yeah, absolutely. So, what would you recommend? Like, what is your favorite company? Let's, let me ask this question.

[00:06:16] Mark Wlosinski: Oh man, that's a tough one.

[00:06:17] Viktoriia Miracle: He likes feeling so excited at the moment. Maybe it's new. Maybe it's not new, but you're like, oh wow. Like I really believe in them.

[00:06:24] Mark Wlosinski: I mean, I'll just narrow it down to a sector versus a single company. I mean, just all of big cap tech, in my opinion, I'm talking about Apple, Microsoft, Google, even Facebook installed a bad news. That's coming out, you know, just companies that control pricing power, they're paying a dividend.

[00:06:42] That's going to keep getting raised over the years. But more than that, What I always look at is for, for decades. I mean, the economy was run by big oil companies and, you know, you look back to when IBM was a leader, that sort of thing. But now what we're seeing is our economy is being run by these companies that are pretty much just printing money based off of bad revenue and other services like cloud, things that aren't really as affected as the, like by the economic standing of our country of our world, whatever.

[00:07:14] You know, look at what happened during COVID the lockdown happened and what happened. People got on social media, they started making more money and people always find that money, even if they're in debt for that new iPhone, it's like, it's kind of changing in my sense. And I understand that there is still risk associated, especially when things are as pricey as they're looking right now, in my opinion.

[00:07:35] But when you're looking, long-term investing, it's hard to go wrong with a company like Google, you know, they own YouTube and Google the two biggest search engines in the world and it's not by a little bit it's by a lot. So things like that.

[00:07:51] Viktoriia Miracle: Yeah. Thank you for that. I, I agree. Definitely tech companies run the world and I believe strongly in blockchain technologies that are coming in all this company adopting them. So it's going to be a powerful world soon.

[00:08:05] Awesome. In the last question that I ask everybody on this podcast is finish the sentence for me, please. If you really knew me, you will know that I am blank.

[00:08:17] Mark Wlosinski: Just passionate about teaching everyone that I can, personal finance. A lot of my friends say, I need to have a little filter cause I talk a little too much, but I mean, it really is something that they aren't teaching in schools.

[00:08:29] And with, like I said, you know, it's, it's becoming more important than ever. It really is so.

[00:08:35] Viktoriia Miracle: Beautiful. Thank you. And I know you, where our audience can find you?

[00:08:42] Mark Wlosinski: Yeah, so right now, the main place that I'm building LTI capital, which is what I started stands for, let's talk investing, is going to be on Instagram, just LTIcapital.finance, and then, you know, I'm going to be starting a YouTube channel very soon, a lot more interactive and kind of going more in depth in my thought process behind investments and just where the market's at that sort of thing.

[00:09:02] Viktoriia Miracle: Beautiful. So, yeah, I'll always go to YouTube search and find Mark there, and we will link everything in the episode, web page link,under that episode. So whatever you're watching or listening or YouTube or podcasts, any platform just scroll down and you will find that, think everything that we mentioned here will be located in them.

[00:09:23] Thank you so much for coming over, Mark.

[00:09:25] Mark Wlosinski: Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you for having me.

[00:09:27] Viktoriia Miracle: Absolutely. And thank you so much for watching or listening, and don't forget if you love this episode, leave a review, like or comment, anything that will help our algorithms. Thank you and I'll see you the next one. Bye.