My Investment Philosophy

I don’t have a lot of money to invest, but we’ve got some RRSPs, and the company has a little money from the sale of digitalisland.com several years ago. My accountant has just suggested meeting with an “investment advisor” to discuss where this money sits. In getting back to him, I tried to express my investment philsophy; here’s what I told him:

I have no interest in investments that are stock market-related, so mutual funds and stocks are out. I don’t know enough about bonds to understand what I’d be investing in and what the risks are, but I’m open to learning. As you know, the Reinvented Inc. investments and my existing RRSP are both in Metro Credit Union GICs at present. I’m comfortable with them there, but I understand that I’m earning less interest there than I would otherwise; if there are other vehicles that would share about the same level of risk, and would also involve investing in my own community, I’m open. That said, I’m not interested in spending a lot of time on this, and I’m generally averse not only to risk, but to investment advisors.

I say this here in public only to declare that it’s possible to live a good and happy live without having anything to do with the stock market, which I consider to be inherently evil.

I’m probably more on the “needlessly stupid” side of the fence on this, of course. But I do have the benefit of having had to expend exactly no effort thinking about investing for the past 10 years. As such, I didn’t profit from the bubbles, but nor did I stress out over the crashes.