Investor Spotlight: Ivana Andric

Follow: @ivana_andric1

Age: 24

Job: Journalism student

Favourite quote: "Live for the day plan for the future”

What she’d do with a million big ones: I would invest in a starter property.

Ivana always assumed that when she got a job and had earned some money she would slowly but surely start investing. But this Jozi girl had no clue how to go about it or what to invest in. Then she found out about EasyEquities, and was amazed at how easy it was to sign up for an account!

“I found out about EasyEquities while doing an internship at a marketing communications company. As everyone knows, “intern” isn’t the best-paying job out there. And so while I knew of EasyEquities I thought there was no point signing up because I didn’t have a lot of money to invest. But eventually curiosity got the better of me and I decided to try it out with R100. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen, right? Up until this point my only experience with investing on the stock exchange was in my first year of high school when my business teacher made the class pretend-invest and whoever had earned the most in profit by the end of the year won a prize.

I remember it being difficult, trying to decide what to invest in. Why I should pick one company and not another? And if I ever put it into practice, how would I invest for real? This provided me with some understanding about the stock exchange and investing, but I was still confused and still had questions. It was only when I decided to sign up for an EasyEquities account that I started to understand how it all works. Signing up for the account was so easy that I started to gain some confidence immediately, and believed I could wax this whole investing thing.

Then I found out that I had to go through the FICA (Financial Intelligence Centre Act) process in order to start making actual investments. All I needed for the FICA process was a copy of my identity document and proof of residence on a utility bill. It took less than 24 hours for me to have an account, go through the FICA process and start investing.

What have I learnt so far from my short time investing? I’ve learnt that it’s not important to invest a lot of money all at once. Rather it’s about investing a small amount over a long period of time. When it comes to investing, it’s not about the money your investment is making right now, it’s about the money that investment will make you in the future.”