An Interview with Roadmap2Retire

roadmap2retire

A recently had the honor of interviewing the blogger behind the awesome blog Roadmap2Retire!

Roadmap2Retire has been blogging since 2013 and his blog covers my favorite topic, dividend investing! So I invited him to share his investing knowledge and experience with us.

Kanwal: Tell me a little bit about yourself and your blog.

Roadmap2Retire: I am a mid-30s software engineer living in Ottawa Canada that is passionate about finance and investing. In my spare time, I am mostly consumed by reading, listening, and watching investing related material. The goal is to learn and work towards financial independence. Roadmap2Retire is my outlet to the world where I share my findings, views and share my progress. With the blog, I hope to document, inspire, and educate both from my successes and mistakes for anyone who is interested.

Kanwal: What is your approach to investing?

Roadmap2Retire: I am not married to one philosophy as an investor. For the last few years, I have followed a two-pronged approach -- dividend growth investing and index funds. More recently, as I feel that the market has pushed the dividend stocks to the nosebleed section, I have started looking elsewhere for opportunities. Currently, I am focused on gold and mining companies as I find tremendous opportunities there. I still continue to own securities in dividend growth stocks and index funds, but the weighting has been reduced over the course of this year.

Kanwal: Why do you feel your approach is the best?

Roadmap2Retire: For most investors, index funds are the best option. There have been numerous studies to show that active stock picking/management does not beat the market consistently. This is the reason why I put part of my portfolio in index funds. But I still subscribe to dividend growth investing as I find it extremely interesting and the approach allows me to study about valuations and learn and improve as an investor over time.

Kanwal: What advice do you have for someone just starting to invest?

Roadmap2Retire: Start with index funds. Once you have a foundation, you can start learning and dabbling in individual stocks. Individual stocks are risky. Whatever strategy you may use, always assume that you may lose your money by putting into individual stocks -- whether the company is new and just IPO'd or a company that has been around for 100 years. By using index funds, you immediately de-risk and can capture the broad market exposure. This is not to say that there are no risks with index funds. Investing always comes with inherent risks. Understanding these risk-reward profiles of securities is what its all about.

Kanwal: Any stocks that look interesting to you right now and why.

Roadmap2Retire: Right now I am focused on gold and mining companies. My current favorite is Franco Nevada (FNV) -- its a streaming/royalty based business that has rights to buy gold/silver from mining companies for a reduced rate in exchange for funding the operations and then sell the metal at market rate. The spreads are huge and the company has streamlined so that it does not have to do anything for the next 30 years and will still keep growing its revenues and earnings. The company is also a dividend growth stock having raised dividends for 9 consecutive years and has a 5-yr dividend CAGR of 22.6%. I have shared more details in this post.

Kanwal: Thank you Roadmap2Retire for taking the time to share your investing knowledge and wisdom!

Learn more about Roadmap2Retire by visiting his blog.

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1 comment

Roadmap2Retire
 

It was great to meet you in person and thank you for interviewing and introducing me to your readers, Kanwal. Hope your readers can find some value by visiting and reading my blog. Best wishes R2R
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