How to invest N10,000 every month
One of the greatest misconceptions people have in personal finance, is that some amounts are too little to invest.
Investment is something that rich people do. Those with loads of money they don’t need. That’s far from the truth. There is never anything such as money that’s not needed. Every Naira can be put to use.
Here is a brief take on how one can invest as little as ten thousand Naira every month.
There are basically two ways to invest money: You can spread it across a basket of assets every month, or you can decide to invest in one particular asset, till you have a significant holding. This article takes the latter approach.
You can also apply the same principle to bigger amounts, till you cross the N1 million mark. Then you can move to slightly more complex asset classes.
1. Units of a mutual fund
You can decide to invest N10,000 a month in units of a mutual fund. A mutual fund pools together funds from various individuals and the money raised is invested by an asset manager on their behalf.
There are different kinds of mutual funds. Some invest in equities or shares. Some invest in money market securities. Others invest in bonds. You also have mutual funds that invest across all asset classes, with a defined proportion.
The minimum amount to invest in a mutual fund varies from N5000 to N10,000. You can decide to invest N10,000 monthly in a mutual fund focused on one asset, or invest in one that cuts across several assets.
You can also split the N10,000 into two. One portion in a mutual fund focused on one asset or another portion in a mutual fund that cuts across various assets.
2. Savings bond
Every month, the federal government through an agency called the Debt Management Office (DMO) sells savings bonds. The minimum entry requirement is N5000. There are two year bonds and three year bonds. Bond payments are made on a quarterly basis.
You can decide to invest N10,000 in bonds every month. When the bond matures, you get your intitial sum or principal back.
3. Equities
If you are willing to take a bit more risk, you can also invest monthly in the stock market. You don’t need millions of Naira, or hundreds of thousands to start investing in this space. Many stockbrokers actually allow you open accounts with them for free. So you can start investing with as little as N10,000 a month.
Since N10,000 is a relatively small sum of money, most brokers would advice you to buy shares in one company on a periodic basis, till you amass significant holdings.
Like with mutual funds, you can however decide to buy shares in one stock or across several stocks.
You could decide to buy shares in Zenith Bank for example on a monthly basis. At current prices, that would give you roughly 500 shares a month. ( A share in Zenith Bank was N20, as at the time of writing this).
If you want to invest across several stocks, there are penny stocks also worth taking a look at. So you could decide to use N5000 to buy 250 Zenith Bank shares, and then the other half to buy 1000 shares in Redstar a logistics firm. (Redstar was trading at N5 as at the time of writing this.
At the end of the year, you would end up roughly 10,000 shares in Redstar and 3000 shares in Zenith. I use the term roughly because prices tend to move
4. A mini portfolio
You can draw up a time table every month and invest across several mutual funds and shares. Here is an example below.
