Double-Feature Interview: Alex Hosko (Wealth Coach & Author)
Fire your financial advisor and write a book in the meantime
Welcome to the interview. Today’s guest is very special Alex Hosko, and we are going to check out two very different angles: as a financial expert, and as a published author. On the financial side, Alex is a wealth coach who specializes in taking the fear out of DIY investing. He is a huge advocate for moving away from expensive “gatekeeper” advisors, simplifying the process, and proving that everyday people can build serious wealth without making it a full-time job.
For those of us who are already financially savvy, you can tap his author side, where he recently condensed his knowledge into, ‘The Part-Time Multi-Millionaire’. If you are a fellow Substacker who already writes regularly, wondering if you should take the leap to write your own book, Alex shares exactly how and why he did it.
Whether you want to finally take control of your own portfolio or figure out if you have a book inside you waiting to be written, Alex has the blueprint.
Section 1 - Who is Alex (quick intro, investing ethos)
Alex, for readers coming across your work for the first time, how would you describe what you do and who you help?
My name is Alex. I’m an author, investor, and wealth coach who empowers everyday people to build wealth and become financially independent. My mission is to create self-made millionaires globally and simplify successful investing.
I’ve personally built multiple six-figure stock portfolios from scratch, and wrote The Part-Time Multi-Millionaire to share my story.
The people I help most are a lot like who I was ten years ago: earning decent money, sensing that they should be doing something smarter with it, but not sure where to start or who to trust.
What I give them is something I had to find the hard way: a straight answer. No jargon, no product to sell, no agenda beyond helping them get to a place where their money is working as hard as they are. My book and my coaching are both built around this concept.
You have a very independent view of wealth-building — where did that mindset come from?
It took me using a financial advisor to learn the truth about the industry that led me to become independent. My investing journey started 10 years ago. I was making good money and decided I should invest but had no idea where to start. So, I sought out the counsel of an “expert” at an international financial services firm that I’ll leave unnamed.
The advisor put me on a dollar cost average plan. He gave me a list of funds and companies to choose from, had me pick five, and set me up on a weekly buy schedule. The first thing that troubled me right away was the fact that he charged me $5 for every buy. I was spending $25/week for an automated service where the advisor was not adding any value.
I figured if I’m spending all this money on commissions, I might as well get some benefit from it. I started asking the advisor lots of questions so I could learn from his knowledge and experience. As I started digging deeper, I realized this “expert” didn’t have much more knowledge than I did.
That was the turning point. I started educating myself. I read everything I could get my hands on from books, to research, to investing forums, and what I discovered was that the fundamentals weren’t complicated at all. The complexity I had assumed existed wasn’t there.
The more I learned, the more I realized the advisor wasn’t a guide, but a gatekeeper collecting a toll. Once I understood that, going independent seemed obvious to me.
When you talk about building wealth in your spare time, what does that actually mean in practice?
I genuinely believe wealth-building shouldn’t be all-consuming. People have full lives with careers, families, passions, things that matter to them. The idea that you have to sacrifice all of that to get ahead financially is one of the biggest myths the industry sells. It creates this false choice between living your life now and securing your future. You don’t have to choose.
The truth is the secrets to building wealth are remarkably simple, and they haven’t changed since the first ancient societies began using money thousands of years ago. Save consistently, invest wisely, and most importantly, let time do the heavy lifting. That’s it. There’s no modern complexity that fundamentally changes those principles. The financial industry has just done an extraordinary job of making it feel like there is.
In practice, my approach takes maybe a few hours to set up and a few hours a year to maintain. The portfolio runs in the background. The contributions are automated. And compounding quietly does its work whether I’m paying attention or not.
All it really takes to get there is three things: patience, discipline, and the desire to start. Most people have all three and just need someone to show them that the bar to entry is much lower than they’ve been led to believe.
Section 2 - How can we do better DIY style (i.e. without financial advisor)
For someone who has always assumed they need a financial advisor to build wealth, what is the first mindset shift they need to make?
The first mindset shift is this: learning how to invest is much simpler than you think!
Most people assume wealth-building is complicated, and that complexity is what justifies paying someone else to manage it. The financial industry benefits enormously from that belief. It’s what sells mutual funds with 2% management fees and “personalized” advice that often turns out to be a product recommendation in disguise.
In your view, what are the biggest mistakes people make when they try to manage their money and investments on their own?
By far, the biggest mistake I see new investors making when they start managing their own money is selling when the market drops because they let their emotions get the better of them. Learning how to invest is easy. What separates average investors from great investors is understanding the psychology of the markets.
Every investor has heard the adage, “buy low, sell high”. But when the market is in freefall and the news is screaming catastrophe, that rule feels abstract, and panic feels urgent. So they sell, lock in the loss, and eventually watch the inevitable recovery happen without them.
With time and experience, you also learn how to zoom out and see the bigger picture. Over a long enough time horizon, the market always goes up. That’s how it was designed. As you grow in your investing journey, you start to see every dip or correction as an opportunity to increase your positions and load up on quality assets at a discount.
Warren Buffett said it best: “Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.” Market corrections act as a clearance sale, allowing you to buy “wonderful companies” and quality assets at a reasonable or discounted price. Some of the most profitable investments I ever made were during the 2020 stock market crash.
The simplest way to avoid this common pitfall new investors make is by dollar cost averaging. Invest a fixed amount at a regular interval, and keep your contributions going regardless of what is happening in the market.
If someone wants to take a more DIY approach to investing, what are the first few things they should learn before putting serious money to work?
These are some of my “golden rules” for investors getting started with a DIY approach.
Pay yourself first: whenever we receive money, it is human nature to spend all of it. Our expenses have a funny way of increasing to match our incomes. Breaking free of this trap is critical to achieving financial independence. The easiest way to do this is allocate a fixed percentage of your pay directly to your investment account, before it ever hits your spending money. Automate it so the decision is already made.
“Time in the market over timing the market”: nobody consistently predicts market movements, not professional fund managers, not analysts, not anyone. The investors who win are the ones keep making regular contributions to their portfolio regardless of what the financial news headlines are saying. Every month you’re sitting on the sidelines waiting for the “right time” is a month of compounding you’re giving up permanently.
Never sell your portfolio: this is where most DIY investors break down. Markets drop, the news gets scary, and the urge to do something feels overwhelming. Resist it. Your job is to keep buying and stay invested. The dip that feels like a crisis is usually just a sale.
Have a coach on an as-needed basis: not to tell you what to buy, but to help you manage the moments when your emotions are louder than your plan. Successful investing is far more about navigating market psychology than it is about picking the right stocks. Having someone in your corner during a correction is genuinely valuable, and far cheaper than the mistakes you’d make without that guardrail.
The common thread across all of these is that the hard part of investing isn’t intellectual. It’s behavioural. Learn to manage yourself first, and the rest becomes straightforward.
4. What does a sensible DIY wealth-building framework look like for an ordinary person with a job, a busy life, and limited time?
For your average investor with a full-time job, automation is the key to making it work. Most of the largest investing brokerages offer a robo-investing option that removes the decision entirely. You set your contribution amount, set the frequency, and the money moves without you having to think about it. That consistency, compounding quietly in the background while you’re living your life is what truly builds wealth.
The framework itself doesn’t need to be complicated. A small handful of broad-market index funds covers most of what you need. You’re not trying to beat the market, but rather trying to own it cheaply and hold it long enough for compounding to do its job.
The rest is just staying out of your own way. Don’t check your portfolio daily. Don’t react to headlines. Rebalance once or twice a year and otherwise leave it alone.
I speak from experience here, as I’m a working professional who has been mechanically dollar-cost averaging from every paycheque for years. It’s not exciting. It’s not something I think about much. But it works, and that’s the point. The goal was never to become a full-time investor. It was to build something that runs quietly in the background while I focus on everything else.
Simple, automated, and boring. That’s the framework. (And boring, in investing, is usually winning.)
Tell us about AEC. I sign up, what can I expect?
AEC Wealth Strategy is my personal, practical, coaching service. It is built around one goal: getting you to a point where you don’t need me anymore.
When you sign up, you’re not getting a financial advisor who manages your money and sends you quarterly statements. You’re getting a coach who teaches you how to do it yourself correctly, from the start.
We work through my framework together: the mindset, the mechanics, and the mistakes to avoid. I share what took me years to figure out so you can skip the costly detours and get on the right path immediately.
I love this analogy: a ship that leaves port just one degree off course will end up hundreds of miles from its destination. Most people start investing slightly off course (wrong products, wrong habits, wrong mindset) and don’t realize it until years later when the damage is done. My job is to make sure you leave port pointed in the right direction.
The sessions are focused, no-nonsense, and tailored to where you are. Whether you’re just starting out or trying to fix mistakes you’ve already made, we work at your pace and build something you can maintain on your own.
The goal isn’t dependency but rather confidence. By the time we’re done, you should be able to manage your own wealth, make informed decisions, and never feel like you need to hand control of your financial future to someone else again.
Section 3 - For fellow Substackers who love writing – talk us through your book-writing journey
What made you decide to write a book?
I wanted to summarize the most important lessons I learned throughout my investing journey and share them with the world. Having fallen into the classic middle-class traps like mutual funds and financial advisors, learning from my mistakes, and eventually becoming a successful independent investor, I want to share my experience with the hope of shortening the journey to financial freedom for others.
I’ve come to learn that billions of dollars are spent marketing the idea that investing is complicated and only for the “experts”. I want to teach people that investing is so simple, anybody can learn to do it. The book is essentially the conversation I wish I’d had with someone experienced before I started. If it saves even one reader a decade of fees and bad decisions, it’s done its job!
For other Substack writers who are on the fence about if they should write a book, what specific signs or criteria would tell them, “Yes, you have a book in you, go for it”?
A lot of people get inspired by hearing the stories of someone who is on the same journey as them, not just the people who’ve already arrived. That’s one of the most underrated things a Substack writer can offer: the authentic, in-progress account of what it actually looks like to pursue a goal.
For writers in the personal finance and wealth-building space specifically, my advice is simple: document your journey. What’s working, what isn’t, and what you wish you’d known earlier. That’s your book. You don’t need to have achieved financial independence yet. You don’t need a perfect track record. You need genuine experience, honest reflection, and the desire to help someone behind you avoid the mistakes you made.
Don’t seek perfection, just look for an opportunity to add value for others. If you have hard-won lessons that could shorten someone else’s learning curve, you have a responsibility to share them. A book is just the most permanent, credible way to do it.
Conclusion
Whether you are based in Canada like Alex or here in the UK, the exact same principles apply. Managing your own money doesn’t have to be scary or complicated; you just need to understand the core mechanics, automate the process, and stick to the discipline.
The part of Alex’s philosophy that resonates the most with me is the age-old rule: Time IN the market beats timing the market. And this is where Alex’s DCA aligns with our ValuationBasedInvesting. When you buy good companies—actual producing assets —they naturally compound over time as the earnings roll in and the wider market eventually recognizes the quality of the business. You just have to be patient enough to let the math work.
On investing and finance -
Let’s break this down further - The best DIY portfolios usually don’t rely on just one style; they run on a ‘Core and Satellite’ approach.
If you are just getting started, Alex’s approach is the perfect foundation – forming the ‘Core’ automated stress-free engine that captures good businesses in the broader market.
[In fact, his goal for his AEC coaching program really impressed me: to take you to a point where you don’t need him anymore. It’s a refreshingly honest business model. Think of it like hiring a private swimming coach for your five-year-old child. The coach’s job is to teach them the mechanics and to get them into a rhythm. Once they have those basics down, the best way to progress is simply to put in the time to swim three hours a week on their own – with the coach gradually stepping to the side.]
If you already have a good portion of your wealth set up in DCA fashion and still have a nice portion of your capital that you would like to learn and steer yourself -—that is exactly where Valuation Based Investing comes in as your ‘Satellite’, covering core investing principles, business valuations and what to look out for when you evaluate earnings
If you want to automate your wealth and build that foundation, check out Alex’s work and his book. And if you are ready to dive into the fundamentals of producing assets, make sure you are subscribed to Valuation Based Investing
On the author’s side – My takeaway – “service over ego”
For the aspiring authors reading this (including myself), Alex’s approach to writing completely shifts the paradigm. It is very easy to view writing a book as an ego play—a way to prove your expertise to the world. But Alex approached The Part-Time Multi-Millionaire purely as an act of service. The goal was simply to have the conversation he wishes someone had with him ten years ago. If you are struggling to figure out what your own book or newsletter should be about, perhaps a less stressful way is to come from the angle of: ‘How can I shorten the learning curve for the person standing exactly where I stood five years ago?’“
And the best part is, you don’t need to lock yourself in a cabin for a year to do this. Your current Substack can serve as the perfect living rough draft. Just focus on shortening the learning curve for the person standing exactly where you stood five years ago, and hit publish.”
Bonus Question: There has been a lot of discussions about the upcoming SpaceX IPO. The community’s thoughts on its historical size and valuations are well known but what’s more pertaining to long term investors is the following question: Will mechanical DCA into Index funds still work if more instances like SpaceX still come on board?
Alex: YES, dollar cost averaging into a broad index absolutely works, even as mega-private companies eventually go public and join.
This is because an index doesn’t depend on any single company’s growth story. Take the S&P 500 for instance, which is a basket of America’s best businesses. The index is constantly refreshing itself. Winners get bigger weightings, losers get dropped. It provides built-in risk management as the mechanism self-corrects over time.
What actually matters when employing a DCA strategy is that you keep buying consistently (through the IPO hype, the volatility that follows, and even through the eventual corrections.) The approach works not because the index is perfectly constructed at any given moment, but because it captures aggregate economic growth over long time horizons, and consistency beats timing every time.
The bigger risk to DCA isn’t which companies are in the index, but rather making errors in judgement like panic-selling during a drawdown, or pausing contributions because valuations feel stretched. That’s where most people lose the edge the strategy gives them.
Remember: Set it, forget it, and stay consistent!