An Interview with Zero to Freedom

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the blogger behind the awesome blog Zero to Freedom!

Georgi at ZerotoFreedom has been blogging since 2018 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.

Georgi: My name is Georgi, and I am originally from a small country in the Balkans called Bulgaria. I have been living in the UK for the most part of the last 4 years. I have two big passions- financial freedom and cooking. Around the financial freedom part I grew a big liking for investing, particularly in dividend stocks. I’ve had some ups and downs in my life, if you are interested to read more, here is my story.

I am a chef by trade and I originally started this blog as a way to share my thoughts around investing and general personal finance with other people. There are not many people around me that I can usually talk with about finance. So I first started it as a way to share my thoughts and as a way to share my journey with other people.

But then I started getting interested in answering people’s questions and helping out. So I started writing articles that will help any beginner investor start out in the stock market. And honestly I never thought I would, but I really started liking teaching people and helping them out in their investing journeys. I always thought that teaching is boring, but it is actually quite interesting and also really satisfying to see a person learning something from you.

Kanwal: What is your approach to investing?

Georgi:The best way to describe it would be value dividend growth investing. My main idea is to have dividends cover my expenses in the future so I focus on dividend growth stocks. But I also try and look for value and generally don’t like overpaying for companies.

So overall it’s quite straightforward- you find a fairly valued high quality dividend company, you buy it and you let it be.

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

Georgi: Honestly I don’t believe that there is such thing as a best approach in investing- people have different goals, different time horizons, risk tolerance and so on. That’s why I teach my readers how to find their own approach.

But I believe this approach is the best for me personally, because it can provide me with increasing dividend income that one day can cover my expenses. And by picking high-quality companies I can make sure that I don’t need to play around with my portfolio too much.

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

Georgi: That investing is not as hard as big institutions make it out to be. You don’t need extensive financial background to be able to build your own portfolio.

It is also not that scary to start out. Most brokers now are super user-friendly and very easy to sign up for. You also don’t need much money to start- even $100 is a start. In fact I started out with $100 and this might be one of the best things I’ve done.

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

Georgi: I have been spending some time researching BP lately. They have a very interesting vision and are making a big push towards renewables. In fact their goal is to be carbon free by 2050. They started investing a lot of money in solar and wind farms, in EV charging stations and hydro energy.

They are also investing in their retail stores, entering new markets and diversifying their business model.

But on the other hand that whole oil fiasco has gotten them at a tricky moment, while they are still recovering from the Deepwater Horizon spill and while investing a lot of money on different projects. They also have a lot of debt and I feel they are one of the worst positioned to weather this storm from the oil majors.

Still, I am extremely interested to see how their story pans out. If they manage to execute their vision we might actually see BP transforming into a growth company for the coming decades. The trend is switching towards electric vehicles, renewable energy and natural gas and this will only keep increasing in the coming decades.

Overall this is an investment for me that will only be measured in the very long-term. I think they will have a lot of hurdles in the coming 2-3 years and a dividend cut is likely. But I believe BP can be a very solid cashflow driver in the future. I can see renewables eventually being more profitable than oil and driving their margins higher. At the moment they are not, but the industry is changing and innovation can bring that to reality. Full Disclosure : I am long on $BP
Additional Disclosure : This article is meant to identify an idea for further research and analysis and should not be taken as a recommendation to invest. It does not provide individualized advice or recommendations for any specific reader. Also note that I may not cover all relevant risks related to the ideas presented in the article. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and carefully consider their own investing objectives, risk tolerance, time horizon, tax situation, liquidity needs and concentration levels. I am not a financial advisor and this article is for educational and personal accountability reasons only.

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

Learn more about Georgi and his blog by visiting Zero to Freedom!

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