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Starting a job as a fresh new graduate, with the thrill of a paycheck every two weeks, is empowering and is the first step towards financial freedom. Just like most millennials, you’ve listened to the advice doled out by your folks and put a substantial chunk of your income into a savings account. Savings are good - a rainy day fund is essential. But the secret sauce to building wealth and attaining financial freedom lies in something else altogether - Investments. The money you put into your savings account or into cash deposits is an investment. The larger sums of money put into popular online brokerages are investments too. The difference? The growth factor often associated with stocks. Power of Compounding Compounding accelerates the pace at which your money grows and is a factor that is often severely overlooked

The strategy that I have detailed below is for investors who do not have the time or patience to spend countless hours on research, do not want to subscribe to expensive publications and definitely do not want to be caught out on a rainy day without savings. My two-pronged investment strategy is for specific investors - let’s call them the Intelligent Investor - and the criteria that I use for inclusion within this subset is detailed below. Passive strategy: ETFs Time and again, data has shown that active investment has not provided returns that are much superior to passive investment. With active investment, you pay a lot to investment managers to bring returns which are higher than the market. Historical data has shown that in a developed market, the incremental returns, if any, don’t justify this higher cost.