Investor Stories: Ryan Potter

A set-and-forget investor, Ryan is a Kernel investor who started his investment journey after a few big realisations. As a Front End Developer, Ryan is passionate about investing in green energy and future tech. He’s a new dad who is working towards creating generational wealth for his family.

Financial literacy wasn’t a part of Ryan’s upbringing with the exception of ensuring he had an emergency fund to fall back on. Looking back now and seeing how much potential he lost out on by simply putting his OE money plus house deposit in a savings account a few years back, he’s kicking himself.

Now that he’s learning from his mistakes, Ryan recently started his investment journey. Luckily there’s a lot more information and guidance available now compared to when he started, so everything feels more accessible. 

Before, everything was a bit too verbose and confusing if you didn’t have anyone to explain it to you, in his words.

Admittedly, Ryan says his goals are a little all over the place at the moment. Ultimately, he’d like to create generational wealth for his family, but for now, he’ll take being able to move into an area with a few great schools for his daughter…without drowning in a huge mortgage.

What he loves about Kernel most is probably a tie between the core funds (NZ 20 and Global 100 Funds) and being able to invest in sustainable funds.

He says it’s nice to be able to put his money to work in sectors that invest in green energy and future tech. Starting with the ‘core’ funds has served him well as a new investor too.

“I think one of the first things I asked was: “Which funds should I invest in?“. Diversified funds thankfully helped answer the question of not really knowing what kind of funds, and split between them, might best suit my goals.” he says.

Currently, Ryan’s Kernel investments make up roughly 70% of his portfolio, with some money in savings, a few individual stocks and a little crypto just for fun. Sounds like a core-satellite investing strategy to us!

Set and forget. Ryan prefers to set up an auto-payment directly to his investment account, then uses auto-invest to invest the funds of his choice. From here, he lets compounding interest do the heavy lifting.

He tried day trading for a bit but found himself glued to his phone far too much watching the market, hoping for success. A behaviour we’re not a fan of either!

As an investor, Ryan describes himself as still a fledgling, but he has been pretty happy with his progress over the last few years.

No promises he won’t share unsolicited investing tips over the dinner table, such as…

If you’re new to investing and planning for your future, Ryan encourages you to do your research and talk to people you respect about the lessons they’ve learned.

Ask for help when you read it and start as early as you can. Oh, and don’t get a 10k car loan!

Further, here are three lessons Ryan has learned throughout his investing journey:

• The best time to start investing was yesterday, the next best time to start investing is today.

• It doesn’t matter how much you’re putting into your investments every week. Just making it a habit will go a long way.

• “Investing isn’t a personality. Please stop exclusively talking to me about Crypto.”, in Ryan’s words.