THE PHASE PULSE
In my twenties I was, by every measure available to me, doing it right.
Money went into the current account each month. The balance grew. I had started a pension, which felt like the responsible grown up thing, and it was ticking along quietly in the background.
Saving felt like the whole of it. Spend less than you earn, keep the rest somewhere safe, contribute to the pension.
It was not that I had never heard of investing. I had.
I just understood, without anyone ever having to say it, that it was not for me.
THE LESSON
Investing was for wealthy people. For older people. For men in offices who already had money and knew what to do with it.
I was twenty something with a salary and a current account. The category simply did not apply.
Nobody had told me that. There was no moment where someone said this is not for you. It was quieter than that, and more effective.
Nobody in my circle talked about it. Not once. Not at dinner, not at work, not among friends. So there was nothing to test the assumption against, and I never thought to question it.
That is how this kind of belief survives. Not by being enforced, but by never being contradicted.
And it does not feel like a belief at the time. It feels like a fact about the world. Investing existed, in the way that yachts existed, and both were things other people had.
So I saved, which everybody talked about, and I contributed to a pension, which my employer had set up for me. Both of those felt like the whole of what was available.
I was not avoiding investing. I did not experience myself as deciding anything at all.
THE INVESTOR MIND
It changed because of a conversation I was not expecting to have.
I was out with colleagues, including two people considerably senior to me. Money came up, as it does, and I mentioned that I would probably use a sum I was due to receive to pay down the mortgage. Just as I had been doing with all the extra money I had leftover from my monthly salary.
One of them stopped and asked why.
I gave the obvious answer. To clear the debt.
"That's cheap money," he said. "You'd do better putting it to work in the market."
He said it the way you would mention the weather. Not as advice to someone struggling. Not as a favour. As though it were simply the ordinary thing an adult with a sum of money would consider.
I had always understood a mortgage as something around my neck. A thing to be cleared as fast as possible. He was treating it as something that could be used. I had never once heard it spoken about that way.
That was the whole conversation. It lasted a minute.
And an assumption I had carried since my twenties quietly fell over.
I had been waiting for permission I never needed. I just did not know that until someone accidentally gave it to me.
THE AHA
I could easily have used the money to pay down the mortgage and never questioned whether another option existed. The door was there, but I had come very close to walking past it.
My barrier was not that investing was unavailable to me. It was that I had never been in a room where anyone assumed it was for me.
YOUR MONEY MOMENT
Nothing to look up this week.
Just a question.
Have you quietly decided that investing is for other people? Not because anyone told you. Because it has simply never been in the room.
If so, I would like this to be the thing that puts it in the room.
You do not need more money first, or more confidence, or a particular age. The door is always open. I spent years not knowing that, and the only thing that changed was someone mentioning it in passing.
And if you are at the start of your working life, that is not a reason to wait. Time is the one advantage that cannot be bought back later.
Catherine x
Phase First.
Phase First is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing here constitutes financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All investing involves risk. I am a Fellow Chartered Accountant, not a regulated financial adviser. You are responsible for your own financial decisions.