Investment Basics

Just starting out on your investment journey?

Have you been investing for a while and need a refresher?

A smart investor takes the time to be clear on the basic principles of investing and uses these to improve investing skills over time and more importantly, to avoid the costly pitfalls.

  • Where are you now?
  • Where do you want to go?
  • How are you going to get there?
  • A personal investment plan

 Where are you now?

The first step on your journey to successful investing involves some calculations and analysis:

 Where do you want to go?

Once you clarify your start point it is important to understand where you are going and why:

 How are you going to get there?

Now that you have identified your goals and tolerance for risk you should:

A personal investment plan

An investment plan defines the strategy and methodology to manage your wealth to fund various expenditures throughout your lifetime. The steps set out in the AIA’s Investment Planning Workbook will help you think about the ingredients of your personal investment plan. The workbook was used as a resource for the 2015 National Conference, but is a useful stand-alone document, with an appendix of references for further reading. 

Warning

It is important that you consider all these key questions before making your first investment.

Getting it wrong here can have huge implications down the track so we encourage you to explore the Investment basics section in detail to ensure you have made the decisions that are right for you.