Frances Cook

But later money needs so much time to work.

Higher earning investments like shares and property, sometimes an investment like starting a business, that's where later money goes.

And let's go back to the COVID crash again.

Remember when the share market started tanking and KiwiSaver and retirement accounts went down and many people went into a blind panic?

I was inundated with emails from people at that time asking for help and saying they needed this money for a house they wanted to buy soon or that they were relying on that money for whatever reason and now didn't know what to do.

And I found it really hard to know what to say because if you need that money soon, it shouldn't be anywhere near shares in the first place.

That's the deal.

Shares are for your later money.

And if you put now money into them or even your soon money, then eventually you're going to get...

a really nasty lesson in why people say not to do that.

Once a crash has happened, the most you can really do is leave it alone for the recovery.

You need to get through using

any other cash source that you have.

Shares need time so that they can recover after these inevitable blips.

And the blips happen and are actually an important way that you make money in the long term.

They're a feature, not a bug.

You just can't sell your shares during that time.

Now let's go back a little bit to something that I said earlier.

I mentioned that $10,000 in your bank account is eventually going to seem small to you.

And indeed, I did not stutter.