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Here on Reel From The Real, i write what i’ve learned in investing x personal finance.
My goal is to:
share optimistic and positive energy - because the hustle is real x rough enough
personalise personal finance that bit more.
😎 To your wealth,
Aila Obiocha
I study financial and economic systems. Lately, I’ve been studying wealth. How it is seeded, grown, and harvested for future generations, etc etc.
In the last 5 years, I picked up a new word in my wealth journey.
Access.
We talk a lot about how knowledge is power, and about how applied knowledge is what takes us from poverty to wealth. Ask the question “what does it take to get rich”, and you will hear some combination of
hard work
knowledge
opportunity
network
But lately, I’ve begun to think about how Access may be more responsible for wealth than any of these other four. What good is knowing about a great business opportunity if you cannot get in on the deal? What good is knowing about the greatest stock markets in the world if you cannot invest and participate due to your nationality?
In a sense, knowledge, opportunity and network are byproducts of Access. If you access the right knowledge, you can change your financial future. Same with opportunity and networking. Of course, accessing the wrong opportunities can transform your financial future - in the opposite direction.
So, perhaps the idea that Access is important to building personal wealth is not new. But what kind of Access am I speaking about?
Access to who? Access to what? And at what price?
What is the cost of Access?
For most investors, and for most of the time, the cost of Access is a large check size. Usually this means something with four to five zeroes minimum. It depends. I’ve seen Access that requires seven zeros.
Here’s why I say this. In my personal experience, and from research, interviews, and studies of building wealth, a large check size usually allows you to bypass the middle men (the real career in all finance industries) and go straight to the source.
A large check size may also end up being the cheaper way to invest your money. Not only do you cut out the middleman by being able to invest your money directly, but there are some investments in which the largest investors pay the smallest fees - or none at all. As a kind of ‘thank you for this mass of wealth which you have placed in our care.’
The larger the investment, the lower the cost of Access.
Let me give a personal example.
There was a fund I decided to invest in. When I started searching for how to invest money in this fund, I came across fund supermarkets - essentially middle men who would take my money (for a fee) and invest it in this fund. Now, the fund had its own fees as well. So I would end up paying both fund fees and middleman fees to access the fund.
Except…
The more I researched, the more I realised that if I could find a way to raise and invest a minimum of £10,000, I could bypass these fund supermarkets completely, and invest my money with the fund directly. Whilst I could not avoid paying the fund fees (investing is not and will never be a free activity1), I could at least avoid paying the middleman fees.
Fund fees, I must pay.
Middleman fees, an (avoidable) story altogether.
And that is exactly what I did.
I downloaded the investment form, completed it with all my details, and sent KYC documents - passport, address, the usual stuff. A £10,000 transaction and a few days later, I was a proud investor in the fund.
This is why I deeply believe in the importance of working and hustling to stack, not just to save. The more I walk this road of building wealth, the more I am convinced that wealth is a stacking activity.
Stacking takes you from short money to tall money.
Stacking helps you develop the discipline of size.
Stacking gives you Access.
And Access may be the only real “secret” in this game.
Money has a cost. Investing is the business of money. It, too, has a cost.