My name is Charlotte Maylin.
I’m 46 years of age.
I set up my hair and beauty salon 20 years ago.
I’ve always been interested in investing and I wanted to know how; can I do it as an ordinary person?
So my first step was to employ an independent financial adviser and they chose some funds for me.
I then decided, and I was reading that there are a million different funds and different ideas out there. So I researched for myself.
I decided to get the publications of MoneyWeek and Investors Chronicle, and that was my starting point.
But of course reading those publications, it’s all very interesting but sometimes the jargon is just impossible to understand, and can be very off-putting.
So I thought, there must be a way round this, so I researched on the Internet and I came across several forums.
You are able to post questions, you are able to read other people’s posts, and after a while you have the confidence to go, “what is the premium? What is a discount?”
So you can ask those questions and many will reply to you and respond to you and are more than happy to help you.
Later on, I came across investment trusts and I decided that this vehicle was much more suitable to my needs.
I like the structure of investment trusts. It is merely a vehicle in order for you to buy shares in a variety of different companies.
This stress is taken away from you because the fund manager decides when to buy and when to sell, and you have a big choice of investment trusts that can be UK based, globally based, or country based. Reservations
with investing are always the same thing and that is risk; will I lose all my money?
But if you look at the fund and you look at the overall performance over 5-10 years they have always outperformed the banks.
