On this episode of #MySarwaStory, we sat down with Elie Irani – an IT professional who’s been in the industry for over 20 years. By night, he’s a modern-day version of a caped crusader as he educates people on the basics of passive investing as a way of building wealth. Elie describes himself as “an investing enthusiast” and started investing a few years ago — proving, it’s never too late!

As is stereotypical in Arab society, growing up Elie was always expected to do well in school and try to find a job that would provide him with a secure income. However, it wasn’t until Elie was in the corporate world that he started to learn about building wealth, which is something not typically taught in school or at home (all around the world, not just in the Middle East). 

“The building block of growing wealth is increasing income, lowering your expenses, and using that gap to invest in something that will provide you more wealth,” Elie claims on the pillars of increasing wealth. 

Elie is an advocate of passive investing — growing your wealth in the stock market, but through exchange-traded funds (a.k.a. ETFs) instead of active investing (i.e. trying to time the market). According to him, not only is this approach self-sustainable, but it will also help people save time. He applies this personally by following passive index investing.

Elie focuses on research to make his financial and investing decisions. From the get go, he taught himself the basic principles of building wealth by reading. In fact, he started with a classic, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which was fundamental to helping him understand the difference between assets and liabilities — the former being something that puts money in your pocket, while the latter taking it out.

“An ‘average Joe’ has the ability to surpass over 90% of money professionals by investing in index funds,” Elie claims based on research and his own experience. “Beating the market is extremely hard to repeat”.

Plug in your headphones and watch the full interview on our YouTube page, or if you’re on-the-go you can listen to it on your favorite podcast streaming platform (such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Anghami).