As an apprentice, who Alhamdulillah (all praise to Allah) is in the position of not having any dependents, my expenses are limited to how extravagant I wish to live my life. In addition to that, being a Muslim who does not drink, party or smoke and in leading a disciplined life, it can be extremely low, relative to my peers.

I am a person that likes to think long-term and so I began financially planning even before I got my first pay check. It means I have tried my upmost best to maximise on investing and saving, but in the last two years of seeing adult money as an apprentice, I have also learnt a lot, and developed my financial strategy since.

Some Mistakes

Most people only know stocks and shares. I was most people. On top of this, I made a few rookie mistakes such as not being consistent, not waiting out long enough, and choosing the wrong strategy in the first place.

As with all financial strategies, you must tailor it to your risk appetite which will be aligned with your goals. The mistake I had initially, was having a short-term goal but going for a medium-high risk investment. Due to Nvidia I broke even (since I joined late) but otherwise, this could’ve resulted in a bigger loss.

Now that I have built the capital over two years, I can now strategically place it into a mix of short, medium and long-term investments each with their own risk levels associated. In this post, I will be documenting the strategy I have gone with after carrying out my research.

Before any of this however, I would like to talk through the best investment out of them all, if you have the mindset and willpower. And that is investing in yourself, as cliche as it can sound – this will give you the skills required to make even more money and therefore invest even more. I’ll give you two examples that really paid off, YouTube Premium and Audible… There is so much value on the internet, and in books – just use YouTube wisely or it can be a trap.

Let’s begin.

Key Concepts

Here are some types of saving accounts you may not be familiar with:

• Notice Period Accounts: Allow you to deposit regularly and withdraw after giving notice (varies between accounts). You cannot withdraw before the notice.
• Bond (Sukuk) Accounts: Allow you to deposit once, at the start of the term. You receive both your initial investment and any profit at the end of the term. You cannot withdraw before the term.

You are probably aware of these already:

• Stocks and Shares: Provide easier liquidity since they can be traded almost instantly on weekdays.
• Cryptocurrencies: Available 24/7, offering high liquidity but come with extremely high risks due to volatility.

1) Emergency / Rainy Day Fund

Goal & Allocation: Easily accessible funds, covering 3-6 months worth of expenses.

• Strategy: I’ve chosen a notice period account with the shortest notice. At the time of writing, Gateway Bank offers a 30-day notice account.
  • If there was an easy access account (zero day notice) with the same or better AER (annual equivalent rate), I’d have chosen that.
• Steps:
  • Sign up to Raisin for easy access & comparison to multiple banks and a £50 bonus using this referral link.
  • Explore Shariah-compliant offers on Raisin here.

Why Raisin? Raisin is an aggregator. It simplifies the process by providing access to multiple banks through one account, requiring a single identity verification. This saves time and often gives access to banks that require higher minimum deposits, like Qatar Islamic Bank. You will find this especially useful when applying for new bond accounts that can expire every 3-12+ months.

2) Low-Risk Investment

Goal: A safe, low-risk option that I can access in 3-6 months if necessary.

• Strategy: I’ve selected another notice account with a notice period of 6 months but higher AER than my rainy day fund. The benefit of a notice account would be that I can regularly deposit more, so my money would compound quicker.
• Another option would be a fixed-rate bond (Sukuk) account with a 3-12 month term, but only if the AER was higher. In this case, I would hold onto the monthly additional contributions as cash and deposit it into the next bond term. The maths would have to work in my favour over a notice account with monthly contributions for this to work – ChatGPT is your best friend.
• Regardless of which option chosen, I would regularly check for better deals so I can make the right call and transfer funds appropriately.
• Allocation:
  • 40% of my savings will be allocated to this investment.
  • 10% of my monthly disposable income will be held regularly deposited into the notice account or stored as cash, ready to reinvest into the next Sukuk when the current term ends.

3) Medium to High-Risk Investment

Goal: A long-term investment (5-10+ years) with the potential for significant growth through compounding.

• Strategy & Allocation:
  • Invest 30% of my savings and 40% of my monthly disposable income into high risk stocks & shares.
    • To make stock selection easy, I use Amal Invest as it integrates seamlessly with my Trading 212 ISA, meaning tax-free returns, zero additional fees (minus FX), and I’m able to turn on auto-invest monthly.
  • Invest 5% of my savings in gold (physical assets, not CFDs), with an additional 2% of my monthly disposable income.
  • Invest 20% into a property IF-ISA through platforms like Nester and 43% of my monthly disposable income into further properties.
    • I have recently come across Amal Invest‘s low risk pie (stock selection) which is included with their high risk pie, this seems to have a higher performance than property so I have moved away from property for now.

4) High-Risk Investment

Goal: A high-risk investment with the understanding that it could be lost at any time due to volatility. The plan is to hold this for 1-2 years but that can change.

• Strategy:
  • Allocate 5% of my total savings to cryptocurrencies, with an additional 5% of my monthly disposable income invested to double down.
• Allocation:
  • Without going into specifics, more than half will be split across BTC, ETH, and SOL
  • The remaining will be split into even higher risk cryptos like ALPH, TAO and RNDR

Conclusion

This strategy is designed to balance accessibility, risk, and long-term growth based on my short to long-term goals. By diversifying across different types of investments and carefully considering the risk associated with each. My goals may not align with yours and so I don’t recommend using this as a guide, my intention is to make you aware of your options, and bring some transparency to my finances.