For years, I thought investing was only for people with thousands of dollars, spreadsheets, and stock market group chats. Spoiler alert: it’s not.
I was afraid of making mistakes, losing money, or just feeling overwhelmed by graphs and jargon.
But avoiding investing was costing me way more than the fear of starting — and once I actually did the maths on what sitting on the sidelines was costing me long-term, I couldn’t unsee it.
That changed when I found Sharesies — and it’s still my favourite platform for more reasons than I expected.
What is Sharesies?
Sharesies is a micro-investing platform that makes it easy for anyone — especially beginners — to learn how to buy shares with as little as a few dollars.
It’s designed to be unintimidating, beginner-friendly, and genuinely accessible, whether you want to invest in local NZ companies, Australian stocks, US markets, or exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
- 🇳🇿 Based in New Zealand with access to NZ, AUS, and US markets
- 💰 Start investing with as little as $5
- 📈 Buy fractions of shares — no need to purchase a full unit
- 📊 Great for beginners: simple interface + bite-sized education
👉 Try Sharesies with my referral link here — you’ll get $5 for free to start!
Why Sharesies Is My Favourite Platform (And Why I Keep Coming Back)
I’ve tried a few platforms. Sharesies is the one I keep using — and the reason goes beyond just the low entry point.
What genuinely excites me is the access it gives me to international markets and ETFs I’d never have touched through a traditional broker.
We’re talking US-listed ETFs with significant dividend yields, global index funds, and individual stocks from some of the world’s biggest companies — all accessible how to buy shares online in a few taps, from my couch, with whatever amount I choose.
That kind of access used to be reserved for people with brokers and briefcases. Now it’s available to anyone willing to start.
- ✅ No minimum knowledge required — just curiosity
- ✅ I started with $20 and no regrets
- ✅ Clean, goal-focused layout that made me want to keep going
- ✅ Transparent fees, no pressure to invest more than I’m ready for
- ✅ Access to NZ, AUS, and US markets including high-dividend ETFs
If you’re a Kiwi beginner researching how to buy shares in NZ, this is genuinely the smoothest entry point I’ve found. Click here to get started.
My First Investment (And What I Learned)
I started with $50 and chose a mix of local shares and a global ETF. I didn’t expect to get rich — I just wanted to stop sitting on the sidelines.
Watching my investments grow (and sometimes dip) taught me more than any book ever could.
Within weeks, I understood things like dividends, dollar-cost averaging, and why people say “time in the market beats timing the market.”
That practical education is something you simply can’t get from reading — you have to be in it.
It also became clear pretty quickly that investing is one of the most powerful streams of income you can build — not because it pays immediately, but because it compounds quietly in the background while you get on with life.
How to Research Stocks Before You Buy: AI Prompts That Actually Help
One of the best tools I’ve added to my investing process is using AI — Claude or ChatGPT — to do preliminary research before I commit to anything. It doesn’t replace proper due diligence, but it dramatically speeds up the process of getting up to speed on a company or fund.
Here are some prompts worth trying:
- For understanding a company: “Give me a plain-English summary of [company name] — what they do, how they make money, who their competitors are, and what the main risks are for investors.”
- For evaluating an ETF: “Explain what [ETF ticker] holds, how it’s weighted, what the expense ratio means for long-term returns, and what kind of investor it suits.”
- For understanding dividends: “What does a dividend yield of X% actually mean in practice? How often are dividends paid, and what affects whether they go up or down?”
- For comparing two options: “Compare [Option A] and [Option B] as long-term investments for a beginner in New Zealand. Consider fees, risk, dividend history, and growth potential.”
- For red flag checking: “What are the potential downsides or risks of investing in [company/ETF]? What should I watch out for?”
These prompts won’t make your decisions for you — and AI can be wrong, so always verify.
But they’re a genuinely useful starting point, especially when you’re learning how to buy shares online and still building your investing vocabulary.
If you want to take this further, I put together an Ultimate Stock Market Prompt Pack — a full set of prompts designed to turn any AI model into a proper stock research assistant.
It normally retails at $29, but at the time of writing it was free or pay-what-you-can.
Whether you grab it for free or not, it’s one of the most useful things I’ve built for my own investing process — covering everything from analysing earnings reports to stress-testing a portfolio against different market scenarios.
A Word on High-Dividend ETFs (Read This Before You Chase the Yield)
Once you’re on Sharesies and browsing ETFs, you’ll inevitably come across funds with eye-watering dividend yields — sometimes 10%, 15%, even higher. It’s tempting. I get it.
But before you pile in, it’s worth understanding what’s actually driving those numbers.
Some of those funds use a strategy called covered calls, which can generate high income in the short term but comes with trade-offs that aren’t always obvious from the headline yield.
I wrote about this in detail because it’s something I wish someone had explained to me earlier: what you need to know before investing in covered call ETFs with extraordinary dividends. Worth a read before you commit.
How to Buy Shares on Sharesies: A Simple Walkthrough
If you’re wondering exactly how to buy shares on Sharesies, here’s the short version:
- Sign up at sharesies.com using my referral link to get your $5 bonus.
- Verify your identity — it takes a few minutes and is required by NZ financial regulations.
- Top up your wallet — even $5 or $20 is enough to start.
- Search for a company or ETF — browse NZ, AUS, or US markets.
- Enter the amount you want to invest — not units, just dollars. Sharesies handles the fractional share calculation.
- Confirm your order — and you’re an investor.
That’s genuinely it. The whole process of learning how to buy shares in NZ used to feel like it required a finance degree. Sharesies removed almost all of that friction.
Beginner Tips for Using Sharesies
- 🟢 Start small — even $5 teaches you more than reading 10 blog posts
- 🔁 Use the auto-invest feature to stay consistent
- 📚 Check out their in-app education — seriously useful stuff
- 🧠 Don’t panic when the graph dips — this is the long game
- 🤖 Use AI prompts (see above) or grab the Ultimate Stock Market Prompt Pack to research before you buy
- ⚠️ If a dividend yield looks too good to be true, read this first
Ready to try it for yourself? Use my referral link to start investing now: 👉 https://sharesies.com/r/KRX3W3
Why I Recommend Sharesies (Even If You’re Broke or Scared)
You don’t need to know everything. You don’t need to be rich. You just need to be willing to start small and learn as you go.
Sharesies helped me shift my mindset from “I can’t invest” to “I am an investor.” That shift — not the dollar amount — is what really builds wealth.
And once you start seeing investing as one part of a broader financial picture, it starts to connect to everything else: your savings habits, your income streams, your long-term goals.
If that bigger picture is something you’re working toward, these 3 steps to financial freedom in 3 years are worth reading alongside this — because buying shares is one piece of it, not the whole puzzle.
And if you’ve ever felt like wealth-building isn’t for people like you, financial freedom isn’t just for the rich — it’s for the fed up. That one hit home for me.
Final Thoughts
Investing isn’t about getting rich overnight. It’s about slowly, steadily building a future for yourself.
Sharesies made that path feel accessible, even to someone like me with zero experience and not much money to start with.
So if you’ve been curious, or even a little intimidated, I encourage you to just take the first step.
💸 Sign up with Sharesies here and start with just a few dollars.
Remember, you get $5 for free just for signing up with our link!
You might be surprised how good it feels to say, “I’m an investor.”
Further Reading
Here are all the resources and related posts mentioned in this article:
Tools & Resources
- Sign up to Sharesies (+ get $5 free)
- Ultimate Stock Market Prompt Pack — Turn Any AI Into a Stock Research Assistant (normally $29 — free or pay-what-you-can at time of writing)
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