Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 280on June 20th of 2026.

This podcast is directed at those who frequently listen to my podcasts and even read my, and other writers' investment books. While these listeners may recognize that their income and wealth could be much greater if they were self-directed investors, they fear the idea of testing the waters and actually building a self-directed investment account.

Anything you have never done before can initially be intimidating - especially if it involves money. However, major banks have made creating a self-directed investment account easy and quick. They put you in total control of your self-directed account.

All the money you may now be paying a financial advisor can be saved. Over several years this can add up to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars that is better invested making you money.

Don't you want to know exactly what you are invested in and why you are invested in it? It will not be like investing in a mutual fund where you have only a vague idea of what your money is invested in and without having direct access to it. With a self-directed investment account, you are in total control.

For those who keep their life savings in a bank saving account where it is making one percent in interest, you could be averaging an annual 7% dividend return each year plus a gain of 10% of more in the share price of the strong stocks you add to your portfolio. That dividend income keeps coming in even during the inevitable market crashes that you wait. relax while you watch your share prices recover.

What motivated me to become a self-directed investor was seeing the mutual funds my investment advisor put my money into lose $300,000 in three years. I feared for my retirement and did not buy his explanation that this is just the way things are in the stock market. That was over 20 years ago.

The value of my portfolio and the dividend income has never stopped growing. You do not have to be a genius to reap the benefits of your own portfolio. Now is a good time to become an independent investor?

IAN .

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
imacd@informus.ca