How to start investing

Perhaps you have a little pile of money and figure it should be growing. The best advice, because of something called compounding, is to start investing as soon as you possibly can. But how do you get started? There are three basic options. To do it yourself, you can open your own brokerage account or sign up to a trading platform. Trading firms are easy to find, and it takes just a few minutes to open an account. Though you will have to have your own investment strategy in mind and know how to execute it. They offer no help with investing.

The second option is hiring a person called an investment advisor. It's important to vet this person rigorously— you're placing a lot of trust in them. Advisors are useful for those with a high net worth or complicated tax situation. The downside with advisors is that they make their living by charging you a pretty high fee for every dollar they manage, and those fees can be more than 2% annually. They take a cut out of whatever growth your investments make each year.

The third option is something called an automated investment service. These services, like Wealthsimple, are engineered to offer the benefits of a financial advisor — like building balanced portfolios and providing human assistance to get your plan going — but at lower fees than a traditional investment advisor.

You have all the options, now you just need to pick one. With that, comes our plug. At Wealthsimple we offer state-of-the-art technology, low fees and the kind of personalized, friendly service you might have not thought imaginable from a from an automated investment service. You can get started investing now or find more details. here.