Welcome to Building Wealth Over Time
Welcome to Building Wealth Over Time.
Through this Substack and my YouTube channel, I’ll be documenting my journey towards what I hope will ultimately be financial freedom.
My goal is simple: build a portfolio worth over £1 million and, one day, generate enough income from it to live off my investments. Along the way, I’ll be sharing the wins, the mistakes, the lessons learned, and everything in between.
How It Started
To give you a bit of background, my interest in investing actually started long before I bought my first stock.
Back in the early days, I was obsessed with property. I spent countless hours researching buy-to-let investing and was convinced that becoming a property investor was the route to building wealth. The challenge, however, was the capital required to get started.
At the time, I had purchased my first home and was looking at how I could eventually move into purchasing more as Buy-to-let investments, but the numbers required always made it a big commitment.
During the period, I had a friend who would regularly speak about investing in stocks. It wasn’t a completely new concept to me. As a child, I used to look at stock prices on Teletext with my Mum and, somehow, I’d pick stocks that often ended up doing well. Whether it was skill or sheer luck, I still don’t know.
But in 2018, I finally decided to take the plunge.
My First Investments
In February 2018, I invested in six companies that I believed had strong competitive advantages and bright futures ahead of them.
My portfolio looked like this:
Microsoft: 3 shares for just over £200
PepsiCo: 1 share for around £92
Netflix: 1 share for around £200
Amazon: 1 share for just over £1,000
Meta (then Facebook): 5 shares for around £653
Alphabet (Google): 1 share for just under £780
The plan was to keep investing consistently into these businesses. I genuinely believed in them, and at the time I had more disposable income than I do now. Instead of letting cash sit in a bank account, I wanted my money working for me.
Unfortunately, life had other plans.
That investment in February 2018 turned out to be the first and only investment I made for several years.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
While those investments performed well, I sometimes look back with a sense of frustration. Not because I picked the wrong companies, but because I stopped.
Had I continued investing consistently into those businesses, I’d be in a much stronger financial position today.
Looking at those original investments now:
Google was purchased for just under £780 and is worth over £5,000 today, a gain of approximately 565%.
Amazon was bought for just over £1,000 and is now worth more than £3,700, a gain of around 261%.
Meta grew from roughly £653 to over £2,700, an increase of 318%.
Microsoft increased from around £200 to roughly £1,159, a gain of 457%.
Netflix rose from around £200 to £524, an increase of 160%.
PepsiCo has been the laggard. The share was purchased for £92 and is now worth around £95, a gain of only 3.25%, although it has paid dividends consistently along the way.
The biggest lesson wasn’t about stock picking.
The lesson was that consistency matters far more than finding the perfect investment.
Getting Back Into Investing
A few years ago, I decided it was time to start investing seriously again.
I began reading more about investing and listening to people such as Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. During Covid there was also a huge explosion of investment content on YouTube, which encouraged me to become more financially educated and take investing more seriously.
This time, rather than picking individual stocks, I decided to keep things simple and invest regularly into the S&P 500 through VUSA.
For the last few years, I’ve been consistently dollar-cost averaging into that position.
Over time I started diversifying into other ETFs as well, including XLKQ, which has performed well for me.
More recently, I’ve become interested in themes such as energy security and clean energy, which led me to invest in the First Trust Nasdaq Clean Edge Smart Grid Infrastructure ETF (GRID/FGRD).
Why I’ve Gone Big on AI
More recently, I’ve made what some might consider a much higher-conviction investment.
I’ve gone heavily into an AI-focused ETF, ticker symbol SMGB.
Performance has been mixed. At one point it was doing exceptionally well, then it stalled for a period, but it has recently started moving higher again.
The reason I’ve concentrated my investments here is simple.
I feel like I’ve seen this story before.
Back in 2018, I bought positions in companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Google because I believed they were shaping the future. I was right about the companies, but I wasn’t consistent enough with my investing.
This time, I don’t want to make that same mistake.
I understand the arguments that AI could be in a bubble. There is certainly plenty of hype.
But I also believe we’re still in the early stages of what AI will ultimately become. Every month, it seems to be finding its way into more products, more industries and more aspects of daily life.
Will there be volatility? Absolutely.
Will there be setbacks? Almost certainly.
But over the long term, I believe the trend is upwards, and I want to be positioned to benefit from it.
What’s Next?
The purpose of Building Wealth Over Time is to document the journey in real time.
I’ll be sharing:
Portfolio updates
Stock and ETF research
Investment ideas I’m exploring
Lessons learned along the way
The highs and the lows
Most importantly, I want to be completely transparent.
This isn’t about pretending to be an investing guru. It’s about documenting a real journey towards financial freedom and hopefully inspiring others to take control of their own financial future.
So if that sounds interesting, please subscribe, follow along, and join me on the journey.
Let’s see where this goes.
Welcome to Building Wealth Over Time.
P.S I track everything using Snowball, which enables me to monitor my portfolio performance and stay accountable to my goals.
👉 Track your own investing journey: [Snowball Analytics Link]
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