Cooking the Books podcast: Becoming an investor for $5

Three of the Sharesies founders, Brooke Anderson, Leighton Roberts, and Sonya Williams. Photo / supplied.

Each week the New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking The Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's a new method for trying out the sharemarket, for those of us who aren't already rich. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Regularly saving, even just a little bit, adds up.

That's often the advice dished out to those trying to do better with their money, and there's a lot of truth in it.

Unfortunately when it comes to investing, it's not so easy.

I'm personally a huge fan of the share market, particularly for young people. It's riskier, but that's a good thing when you've got lots of time, as you can ride the waves to a bigger eventual return.

But even if you know all of this, investing when you're young isn't so easy.

When you're young is also when you're broke. You're still low on the job ladder, trying to pay off student loans, maybe save up a house deposit, and hey, having a life would be nice as well.

Telling someone to chuck a couple of thousand dollars on the sharemarket when they're struggling to make rent is not always helpful, I know. But you've got to do something to start building your way up.

Well there's a movement around the world of trying to make investing easier for those of us who aren't already rich.

Even in New Zealand, in the past couple of months we've seen the creation of a new online investing platform that says you can become an investor for as little as $5.

It's called Sharesies, a platform that works on the idea of investing a little bit, but often. They give you access to index funds, and let you track how you're going.

It's only existed for two months, but they've already attracted over 3500 people, and had $1 million invested through the platform.

So I invited Brooke Anderson and Sonya Williams in to talk on the Cooking the Books podcast about what they're doing, what customers make of it, and what their plans are for the future.

For the full interview, listen to the podcast.

If you have thoughts about this episode, or if you want to message me about something you want covered in the future, I'd love to hear from you. I'm Frances Cook Journalist on Facebook, and Frances Cook on Twitter. It's also super easy to make sure you never miss an episode, just hit subscribe on the Apple podcasts app, or on I Heart Radio.