Equitise: Equity Crowdfunding- Anyone know anything about it?

I am interested in learning about shares and buying some in the future. I haven't bothered to learn about them yet as at the moment my focus is paying down my PPOR as aggressively as I can. As soon as that is paid off I plan to get into the share market as I already have IP's which are long term holds. Im a bit over property and not excited by it like I first was, I excited by shares but don't know much about them in all honesty. The reason I am waiting to get into shares rather than get started now is because I don't want to borrow any more money, I would rather play around with them with my own money when I don't have PPOR debt that needs paying.
I stumbled across this tonight, Equities.
Crowdfunding Australia & New Zealand | About | Equitise

Does anyone know much about it? Obviously risks are higher being start ups, but I sort of like the idea of getting in before they take off. The other appeal to me is that you can invest as little as $250. I don't mind investing small amounts like that here and there for fun with the hopes of seeing my cash grow!

Are there any downsides fees wise etc? Any traps I should be aware of?
Looks like a fun way to invest small amounts (a bit of a gamble!)

 

If you only “invest” $250 you can’t lose much.

Or just take your $250, go to the casino and put it all on red.

In either case, you may get lucky! (But the odds may be better at the casino!).
Marg

 

Have you heard of 'debt recycling'? No need to wait until you pay your home off and not need to borrow more than you have borrowed now before you get into shares.

What you do is split the loan, pay off a portion, and borrow to invest, claim the interest and use some of the income to pay down the non-deductible debt further and keep repeating.

 

Hi Terry, complete novice here to debt recycling ..

Could you tell me why you split the loan

 

2 reasons
a) so you don't create a mixed purpose loan, and
b) so you can pay off the non-deductible portion faster than the other.

I think this covers it in more detail

Tax Tip 3: Mixing Loans - Don’t do it https://propertychat.com.au/community/threads/tax-tip-3-mixing-loans-dont-do-it.1517/

 

Thankyou Terry

 

@Terry_w my purpose for not splitting/redrawing and buying shares is because I want to pay down my PPOR in the offset and have it paid off (in the offset) for peace of mind. I don't want to go gambling my hard earned savings in shares (and ruin goal of paying off my PPOR) until I have educated myself A LOT more than I have so far about shares. I just want to dabble a little bit in them for now with smallish amounts (1k here and there max). I registered myself in the ASX game today so that I can practise with pretend money until I get my head around it and educate myself enough to play the real thing with my real cash! I did buy 125 shares for $255 in Xinja Neo Bank though because I couldn't help myself.

 

So its entertainment. Thats fine, but think of it like the lotto. Its not a different type of investment.

You could just buy actual shares but in smaller amounts to get experience. That would be a real investment. This is just something interesting to talk to your friends about.

 

Entertainment and learning for me now. I want to seriously get into shares once my PPOR is paid off. I had the property bug but its worn off now that I have a few IPs. Property was exciting for a couple of years when every week you'd check the sold prices in your suburbs and it was going up every week, but its been stagnant for about 6 months now so its boring now! I haven't got any friends/family interested in property or shares to even talk to them about if I wanted to lol.

 

That's buying shares in companies that haven't got a track record, which is higher risk than proven smaller companies, which is higher risk than blue chips, which is higher risk than a diversified portfolio of equities. It may give the highest return but lower likelihood.

 

Since Im only investing such a small amount I would rather risk losing it all and have the prospect of possibly getting a higher return. I don't see the point in investing such small amounts in blue chips. If I was after minimal returns I would just be boring and leave it in the bank. As i said its just for fun and learning for now