Bonds, Stocks, Crypto? Here’s How Smart Professionals Invest in 2025

So when I was 19, I obviously analyzed companies. But what I had at that point I was investing wasn't very much. And even if I lost all of it, it wouldn't be very much compared to now. I'm now in my 30s, late 30s. I've got like mortgage, I've got like property, I've got like dependence on different sites, different level. Obviously my risk capacity is different from that 19, 20 year old. If you think you're 60 or maybe in your 50s or your 40s, wherever you are, understand what is your risk capacity if you lose this money, what's the worst thing that can happen? If you're a doctor or healthcare professional and you're worried about investing and you get confused about investing and things, you worry that is risky and you worry that you lose money, but you know that you should be investing and you don't understand concept. When you hear things like ISA stock and shares isa, it gets you confused. Then you want to watch this video. This video is a live recording of a live Q and A session with all almost 100 doctors and healthcare professionals with burning questions around investing, Lifetime isa investment that doctors could do even above 40 years of age, as well as how to avoid the dreaded 60% tax trap and much more. So if you're interested in those topics and you'd like to hear the answers we discussed and the question that we addressed, then you want to dive into this video. And if you are new here, I'm Dr. Andy Egwene, founder of moneywisedoctor.com I'm an ex salary GP, an entrepreneur and investor. And on moneywisedoctor.com we help doctors and healthcare professionals make smarter financial decisions. Dive in. This will be day four or thereabout. And we address sort of like when we talk about generational wealth, because day four you're thinking about things like your inheritance tax, you're thinking about things like will, you're thinking about things like legacy planning. If you've been through the 10 money wise rules, which I think maybe somebody from my team will share, if you've been through the 10 money wise rules, rule 10 is legacy planning, you have to plan for that. So if you've got investments, if you've got a will, it will automatically go to whoever is the beneficiary. If you don't have a will and you're married, according to common law here, your partner, if you're married or you are in a partnership, then I think, I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not an expert in that area. But I think your partner is likely going to be the person to benefit. But again, part of investing and planning and finance is things like legacy planning. So your family should be able to get all of that or whoever you've designated could get all of that. The same applies to your life insurance. The same applies to property. If you've got a house or stuff like that. This is part of the plan and not just investing, but making sure your family can get it. Okay, in terms of platform, the key thing I look out for for a platform, if you are just a passive investor, you're not, you're not picking individual stocks. The key thing look out for is fees. You want a platform that has the least fees. I might say one platform now and maybe like let's say two months later by the time this video is out or maybe the video is out in a week and another platform has a lower fee. You want to pay as little fees as possible, whether it's a financial advisor you're paying or whether the platform, as long as they offer the same features or offer you what you want. Because some platform might charge fees and offer you more. They might offer you bells and whistle. They might offer you the ability to trade overnight or anytime you want. The market is not open overnight anyway, but you don't care about that. It might be that you don't need it because you invest automatically.

7. There are seven steps to take before you even start thinking of investing. As a doctor healthcare professional now this is really important to secure your financial foundation before you start investing. Now I've covered these seven steps in a simple guide that I've made available for you in the link in the description. You can download it. It will help you to build a solid financial foundation, avoid common investing mistakes and also make tax efficient investment decisions. Start your investment journey the smart way. Download the guide now using the link in the description and good luck on your investing journey. Now let's get right back to the episode.

Right? Okay. Now I've got to leave you with something really quite key. If you don't remember anything else, you need to remember this bit. And for those of you in the 12 month money wise Dr. Mastermind, this is one of the things we hammer, will hammer throughout the year is risk appetite versus risk capacity. Okay? We've talked about one way to manage your risk. Okay? Dr. Sampa, Dr. Malika Sampa said she will do her due diligence, she'll do her research, find out it's a good company. Which is another discussion. We can have how do you do your due diligence? How do you find out the company where can you check the documents? What does that really mean? Do your own research. How can you find out what is the current returns from bonds versus all that stuff you can deal with in the chart. But basically in terms of risk management we've talked about do your due diligence. Don't just be quick to just give your money to random people just because they're wearing a nice suit and they're speaking really nice posh accent. 2 We talked about the risk of cash if you just leave your money in a bank, make sure that you're not saving more why I'm saying this and I know the problem that some people think oh, does anyone got 85k to save? Yeah, actually people that have like 10 times that amount. I know because from money wise Dr. I've seen like my CPU are in, in like 150k, 200k but they're in debt. Then you see another person earning 50k and they've saved like 250k. Wonder like how do they manage? So I see a lot of stuff that we don't talk about here. So but understanding the risk of FSCS, you don't want to be saving more than 85k in a bank. And remember that you pay interest if you save above your savings allowance, if your interest above. We talked about the risk with stocks and the index fund because stocks could actually up or down. I mentioned 1925, there was 1929 stock market crash. Many of us here lived through 2008 global financial meltdown. And then there was also 2010, sorry, not 2010 was just a flash crash. There was 2020, the COVID crash, which I mean I know it was a difficult time for many people, even for me personally, but from an investment point it was a gift because there were so many things that were selling far, far below their, you know, their core value as a company. But these are all discussions we'll talk about along the way. But again basically we are looking at the risk of bonds. We say the bond depends on the issuer. Now when we talk about risk we don't all have the same risk appetite. And that is why one person wants to invest in crypto, one person wants to invest in stocks. One person says I just want index fund. And there are even people who are just like, you know what, I'm just going to buy bonds, I'll get my 4%, I don't care about inflation. And then someone said how are you sure about bonds, I'm going to put my money in cash. And then there's even someone who says no, I don't want to put money in cash because the government might decide, well you know what, this money is now useless. Some people buy gold or some people buy crypto and store the be code or whatever. So you need to understand this is a self reflection for you to do. And that's part of the email I sent earlier. You need to understand what is your risk appetite. Risk appetite is psychological. Remember what I said at the beginning, you can either eat well or sleep well. If you want to think, oh, I want to take more risk but you're not sleeping, then you need to reduce that risk. If you make an investment like many of you think, oh, because I'm investing for 20 years I talk about investment. I'm not logging in every month to check. Sometimes it might take like several months or even a whole quarter. I'm not checking because that's my risk appetite. And if I go in before I invest into a company, I'm very slow. I'm doing the research, I'm trying to understand the company. And it might turn out that I'm thinking, oh, this company is overvalued because their PE ratio is quite high. A time you don't have to worry about if you're doing passive investing, might say, oh, they've got a new person in their board, their competitors have an issue or something is happening or there's an opportunity in that area. I think this stock is on the valley and if I am not able to sleep then I shouldn't be making that investment. If I need to check it every day, get my heart rate going up, palpitation, that means you're not sleeping well even though you might eventually eat well. That's not financial peace. That's not what you want to do. So you need to understand where am I comfortable? And for some people it's going to be broad based, well diversified index funds, which I think is the best for most doctors given your busy careers and so many things you're dealing with broad based, well diversified index for whether it's a global Foreign S&P 500. This is not, I'm not sort of recommending any specific products. Okay, now for some other person, they might decide, you know what I'm going to do 50, 50, I'm going to do 50% in index fund, I'm going to do 20% in individual stock, I'm going to do bonds. Okay, so this is a personal reflection. Hopefully before the end of this seven days should be able to craft your own investment plan or at least have an idea what your risk appetite is. So this is risk tolerance or risk appetite is psychological. So you need to reflect on that and chat about it in the community chat. What's your risk appetite? Was a risk tolerance. How do you feel about investing in things like that? Then there's the other word which people confuse called risk capacity. So that is not psychological. If you read my email today, because during this challenge I'm going to be sending an email every day by 6pm and then by 7.30pm we'll come up on the WhatsApp chat, we'll chat about it and questions will be answered. Like today we had to come on Google Meet. Yesterday we did Google Meet. There's no Google Meet tomorrow, there's a Google Meet on Friday. I'll be announcing everything in the WhatsApp chat. But risk capacity is different. Like I sent in my email, risk capacity is financial. Risk appetite or risk tolerance is psychological. For example, 35 year old or let's say that, yeah I said that five year old resident who's got maybe decided he's got another 30 years to work, has other sources of income, hasn't got any dependence or mortgage or whatever, probably might have more capacity to be a risk. It might be that even if things go bust, for instance, when I was 19 and I obviously analyzed companies, but what I had at that point I was investing wasn't very much and even if I lost all of it, it wouldn't be very much. It was my all on all at that point. But it wouldn't be very much compared to now. Okay, so I'm now in my 30s, late 30s. I've got like mortgage, I've got like property, I've got like dependence on different sites, different level. I've got charities I have to pay, sorry charities I support on different things. So obviously my risk capacity is different from that 19, 20 year old. Obviously just in med school I was teaching my consultants how to invest as a medical student and I actually spoke in conference and all that. But my risk capacity is very different compared to now. So it's really important for you understand where you are in your journey before you make any investment. Remember rule one, don't lose money and rule two, don't forget rule one. So if you think you are 60 or maybe in your 50s or your 40s, wherever you are, understand what is your risk capacity if you lose this money, what's the worst thing that can happen? Like I Told you, I invested in the startup. It's quite a bit of money. I invested in the startup. But again, I capped my investment in startups at a percentage, 5 to 10% of my investable assets. And if that goes okay, that's my risk capacity. I'm not gonna do more. Okay, if you wanted some people put money in crypto, they asked me, is it wrong? I'm like, crypto, I don't know, it's a bit like gambling. But if you don't want to have a heart attack because your neighbor maybe bought the crypto, now he has a Ferrari. I didn't. You don't have a Ferrari because it's not invest in crypto. I think I just want to invest in crypto. You might say, okay, I'm just going to put 1% or 5% or what in this. Of course, I'm not recommending invest in crypto. This is asset allocation now, because I'm going to put 5% so that if it does well, I'm going to say, well, at least I got some upside. And if it goes to zero, I'm going, oh, I wasted my money. But that's not the end of the world. So understand your risk tolerance and risk appetite versus your risk capacity even before you start thinking of asset allocation now. That's what is going to affect your assets. All right, I'm just going to take one more question before we end here and we'll continue the chat in the group and again, I'll send you an email tomorrow. In the challenge, the goal is that by day seven, you should understand what is investing. You should understand who you are as an investor, your approach, you should have a plan. And also for many of you who are prime and ready, you'd have done the seven things you need to do before you start investing that I talked about yesterday. And I've also shared a guide in the group which you can download for free. And there's also a video about it on my YouTube channel. Some of you will be able to set up your investment account and make your first investment. That way it stop being like something mysterious or mystical for you and you can start taking charge of your financial future. Right, Any more question at this point?

This is how to get financially smarter in just five minutes. Sometimes the difference between making smarter financial decisions and costly, horrible financial mistakes is having the right information at the right time for the right person. So every week I write the Moneywise doctor Weekly newsletter. It's an email newsletter packed full with valuable financial insights and updates to help you make smarter financial decisions and avoid costly mistakes. Some of the areas I've been covering over the last 70 weeks include actionable tips on tax strategies, pensions, investing side hustles, and several other financial areas. Now join thousands of medics who subscribe to the Money Wise Doctor weekly newsletter to receive it straight to your inbox. And it's totally free. Don't miss out. Subscribe now using the link in the description. And now let's jump right back to the episode.

Thank you, Malika. Yeah, Daniel is clapping. Okay. I clap back.

All right.

So that, that means it's all clear at this point, you know. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to end now if we haven't got any questions. And again, look out for your emails. I'm sending you an email. If you signed up through the front door, you didn't come into the back door into the challenge. That means you did a test, you did like you answered some question. Thank you so much, Jade. I appreciate that. Yeah, if you sign up to the front door, that means you did a quiz and then got enrolled into the challenge. So you should be getting an email from me. If you get an email from me by 6pm if you can't find the email, then you should check your spam. So if you can't find email in your inbox, then check your spam because sometimes the email might drop in your spam. Then drag it from your spam into your inbox and tell your email provider that this is important so that you're not missing the emails I send. Okay. All right, so I'm going to draw the curtains here and then let's continue the chat in the community chat. All right, well, I hope you found that helpful and more importantly, I hope it helped you to see investing in a new light. This is just a small section of what we cover in the full master class. If you like me to drop more of these clips, just let me in the comments. Comment, invest and share this video as well with friends who may need to hear this. And if you are ready to stop winging it and guessing, guesswork is not good for investing if you want to learn how to become a confident investor. To learn how to invest properly, check out our investing readiness scorecard with the links in the description. It will help you determine whether you're really ready to start investing and what you need to do before you even start thinking about investing to reduce the chances of you losing money. And until then, see you soon. Bye. Bye.