Julie Hyunjoo Lee – Start Investing Your Money Even in a Small Amount

Julie Hyunjoo Lee is actually the founder of Pinkfolio. It is a new and innovative personalized application for women wealth training. The application has been developed by her to help all those females who face difficulty in managing their wealth. It is capable of acting as a personal trainer that helps women in managing their money and tacking their investments for getting their finances properly shaped. Before the development of her application, she also began with an idea and she didn’t let go it. She took the opportunity and that is the reason why she is standing apart and unique in her own world. She exclaims:

“If I talk about my normal day then as soon as I open my eyes, I email myself all the new ideas that should be worked upon. This way, I am able to ensure that I don’t forget even a single idea and it proves to be quite an effective strategy. Another thing I do is email myself all the tasks which are due and were not completed yesterday. There is one thing that you should remember, you must meet your priorities no matter what. It will help you in being productive because anyone who is not capable of meeting deadlines, is not able to be creative and think about new ideas. As soon as these tasks are completed, I consume my homemade latte. It is my weakness and I cannot begin my day without it. When it comes to getting at office, I prefer reaching at 9 am. As I am working on different strategies and plan for my application, I keep myself reminding that I should take some time off and invest it in doing creative activities. Data visualization is one of my favorite tasks that I do in my creative time.

Before I return to how I spend my day, I would like to tell you that being productive and creative is certainly necessary but it doesn’t mean you should degrade your creative time. As you work, even in your house, you should take some time and explore new ideas about the tasks that you have been doing until now. It can help in refreshing your mind and getting the vigor back to start working again.

At the end of my day, it is crucial for me to have dinner. And I cannot miss out on talking with my husband while having dinner. Whenever we are sitting and eating food, we make sure to talk about all the creative tasks and milestones which were reached on that day. It helps me in not only motivating myself but also gaining some confidence from my husband because he is like an iron pillar in my life. He is always supporting me and I am taking inspiration from him to continue working.

Right after the financial crisis which appeared in 2008, my bank advisor was asking me to take the risk and make a small investment, and I was spontaneously giving ‘no’ answer without even evaluating my risk lenience. Then I decided to transfer my money temporarily in a bank savings account. That was a disappointing moment for me when I recognize how my saving was only growing by 6%, and at the same time, one of my friends was growing her investment for 32%. Later on, I turned out to waste all my money than saving them.

            That time, I asked some women who had the same decision as I did. Most of them were saying that they feel unconfident in making any investment. Well, I could never blame them or myself as well, since we did not have proper financial education to convince us about investment thing. Then I started to learn more about personal finance and investment.

            After I have enough knowledge, I decided to create Pinkfolio, which is an application designed to assist women in building financial understanding and gain concrete money goals via notifications, videos, quizzes, and also data visualizations.

Before creating the application, I used to ask women about how they manage their finances. Most of them seemed to have similar approaches and whenever it came to investment, they would lose confidence and I got to know that women didn’t feel confident enough to invest their money in a specific idea. I was intrigued to realize that females had the potential of doing great with their money but they didn’t know how to properly manage it. That is when I thought that gaining knowledge about performance finance with the help of more reliable and engaging tools can improve confidence and strengthen behavioral changes. I have been in the industry for a long time and I believed back in the time that visual illustration could help women in getting to know about finance in a better way.

Content of financial education is actually scattered with various providers and it is quite tough to assess reliability and credibility. In addition to it, a significant part of the content is targeted enough and is also not goal-oriented. Using such type of content can be misleading and it can even result in the waste of time and efforts. Sometimes the content is too technical and it becomes hard to understand what it is trying to convey. I am not saying we are not capable of understanding the technical language. However, such content is tough when it can be made easy. I don’t think that people can make decisions when they have such type of data available or even gain knowledge from it because interpreting it is quite tough.

            We would tackle this challenge with the use of interactive tools, visualization of figures, and personalized content. Customization has made it very easy to understand finance and it has played an important role in decreasing boredom as well. Considering the fact that financial education must be relevant to the life events of a woman, our application will provide personalized content and training to ensure that women gain only relevant knowledge and information. Now that I have discussed my application and how it works, I would like to give advice to all women who want to be proficient in their financial management and want to be financially independent.

Before working on anything else, you should invest in understanding the nature of your objectives and business. It is important to realize just what are you working towards and what is it that you wish to achieve. When you think that you are ready to invest your money, you will come to recognize that startups are not easy. If you don’t want to be confused, you should build your focus and knowledge for your growth and expansion. For instance, it is critical to clarify if your business is concerned with scaling up with technology, or it is a sole proprietorship that is offering customized services. Then, you should select the right resources which can prove to be effective for you. When you know which resources should be utilized, it would help in cutting down both your money and efforts.

You should be spreading the word about what you are offering and getting numbers including meaningful traction, partnership, investment, funding, and sales revenue for ensuring that your idea is tangible and it can be sold. It is important to remember that startups don’t grow just with ideas. They need the support of numbers.”

On the topic of rewards, she says;

“I am feeling rewarded when my clients and users are getting value from all of my projects. In the time that I have invested in the field of business, I have had many clients and when they tell me about how my application has benefitted, I truly feel that I have done something amazing and useful. I am really grateful for the faith that my customers have put in me and they often say that it is because of how confident and firm I am towards my projects.

In addition to it, I feel fulfilled and happy whenever I am able to offer my advice to someone who is confused and wants a solution regarding how to manage their finance. The feeling that I get by helping people really is unique and I will continue to work towards it and make sure that more people are being benefitted from my projects.”

For all women who wish to be financially independent, she recommends;

“For all those women who want to do something and be financially independent, I would say they should invest a small amount of money for lowering risk and become familiar with the management right now. It is quite simple to do it either using the internet or at the bank. There is one thing that you should keep in mind, you should take the opportunity when it is available to you because we are not sure which might be available again. You can make and earn a lot more than just be researching the web and debating whether you should invest or not.

For instance, it takes a lot of time to save for the downpayment of a house in Toronto, what about making a contribution on a monthly basis for indexing funds under RRSP? Normally, 500 dollars is the amount of initial investment and it is possible to invest an amount as little as 25 dollars. Once you really begin investing even a tiny portion, you will be able to track it, and your confidence and interest will increase. Moving on, as time passes, you can work to expand your portfolio.

You should always remember that no one really cares for your finance more than you. In fact, you are the only one who is willing to invest efforts in it. Otherwise, you will not be able to find someone who will sacrifice his or her time over your finance. You have to do it yourself.

If you have the opportunity of investing in yourself then you should not waste it. In fact, you should take it as soon as possible as it might not be available again. Make some time for yourself and understand how your budget works. Once you are able to take a small amount from it without disturbing it, you should begin your own investment. It will help you in building yourself and making a bright financial future for yourself.”

            My advice for every woman is that, start investing your money even in a small amount and get the benefits from it. If you still do not know about any investment, then you should learn about it first. Believe me, the investment will give you a better future.”