Finance Fridays - Issue #24

Russel Groups Degrees, Juggling Multiple Projects and Beating the Market

Author

Seyi Agboola
July 26, 2024

#24 - Finance Fridays - Russell Groups Degrees, Juggling Multiple Projects and Beating the Market

This is the Reality Cheque’s newsletter where I document my journey to financial freedom through learning more about personal finance. Every week expect curated content on personal finance, career advice and entrepreneurship. And the best part is it'll always be less than 5 minutes to read!

*This is not financial advice, just me brainstorming about things related to money. Stocks are extremely volatile - value can go down as well as up. All investments and income streams may be subject to tax.

Contents:

  • 💡 Idea of the Week - What REALLY Makes University valuable

  • 💸Entrepreneurship - Principles for juggling multiple projects

  • 💹 Investing - This investor keeps beating the market

💡 What REALLY Makes University valuable

So I saw this Reddit post:

The discussion revolved around choosing between a Russell Group and a non-Russell Group university and how much clout these universities have nowadays.Originally set up in 1994, the Russell Group is made up of 24 “world-class” research-intensive universities in the UK.

Amongst the many sub-threads, one thing that wasn’t discussed is that the real benefit of attending Russell Group universities is the network of people you meet. If we consider that in 2017, the most privileged students were 14.5 times more likely to enter top universities than their disadvantaged peers. That tells us you will meet people with wealthy connections in the workplace and potentially your industry.

If we stop pretending nepotism isn’t a thing and acknowledge that London is UK’s worst city for nepotism with half of workers handed jobs through connections. And of those workers, one in eight entered a senior management position because of personal links. Then we can see the value of studying with the right people.

Many commenters did highlight that £10,000+ is still a significant amount of money but is it?

One person said:

To me we’re not debating £10,000 in one go but how much is that £10,000 across the rest of my career which would span multiple jobs and years. If it was me, my priority would be to ensure the best opportunities post-graduation, which would be the difference between your dream job and a good job at an average company. That’s pretty priceless in the grand scheme of things.

💸Principles for juggling multiple projects

My favourite 2 tips from this video are:

  1. Give every hour a job

It’s easy to lose track of your to-do list when there’s no actual time allocated to the tasks. Having to say when and where you will complete a specific task, forces you to prioritise the most important tasks at the times of day that you’re most likely to do them.

  1. Health bar method

When you’re someone who always has something that needs doing, you realise that it isn’t time you need but energy. For example, trying to do mentally intensive tasks when you have a “low mana bar” is pointless. Just because you are physically able to go for a HIIT session at that moment, doesn’t mean you are mentally capable of presenting a complex subject to the CEO of your company. 

Everyday starts with a full health and mana bar and you would probably prioritise the heavy tasks when you have a full tank than when you are exhausted. 

This probably explains why going to the gym in the morning is such a good idea. Or doing the most difficult, complex tasks in the first half of your working day is advised.

💹 This investor keeps beating the market

I’m very tempted to copy this guy’s portfolio. I’ve been watching his videos for some time and his logic is always sound. But the cautious side of me knows that someone rarely beats the market over the long term. In the meantime he’s killing it without even having NVIDIA which is the one stock carrying the whole market.

At the same time I’m trying to understand what makes this guy so special? Compared to hedge fund managers with more resources and incentive - who are currently underperforming. What is his secret sauce?

✍🏿Quote of the Week 

"A great idea with poor execution will do better than a poor idea with great execution."