Digital Investments webinar: Inflation is the biggest enemy to investing – Kalu Aja

Experts have highlighted that inflation is the biggest enemy to investing as inflation reduces the value of money.

Kalu Aja, personal finance expert and financial commentator stated this during Nairametrics’ quarterly Digital Investments for Gen Z Webinar themed, “How to invest with the world on edge”.

According to him, taking a macroeconomic view is best when making financial decisions involving savings or investment.

Mr Aja noted that inflation has the capacity to attack savings and make the purchasing power less valuable, otherwise the money is invested.

He said, “Inflation is the biggest enemy to investing because it steals your money and you can’t hide your money from inflation, neither can you avoid it in whatever you do; It reduces your purchasing power. This means that if you are a young guy and you work very hard and you have savings in the bank, inflation comes and attacks those savings and takes it away from you, the value if you don’t invest to get more.

“Putting it in the bank is safe but it can’t buy less than what you have. So, it’s very important to take a macro view to say, if I am investing, I want to make sure that at the end of the investing period, what I have now can buy me what I have at the end of the investing period.”

Speaking on opportunities available for Gen Zs, Aja noted that the younger investors have many opportunities than the older investors. He said, “When I was growing up, I didn’t have an opportunity to invest in American stocks. We could only invest in Naira and Nigeria but right now you can use your phone to buy Tesla and whatever stocks that suit you.

“The second advantage is just information; they know much more because they can go on their phones to source for information that allows them to make better returns on stocks, bond, real estate and others. They are going to have a better deal than us because they know more. But what I think they should do is to research; you have to try and understand the trend before investing your money.

Canvassing long term investment, he stated that many youths want to make money quickly. “That is not investing, that’s gambling, you have to slow down, understand the asset class you are investing in, research and put your money on what would work for you on the long term,” he said.