About Get Rich Slow
In September 2022 I invested $22,000 across seven ASX companies using a framework drawn from Warren Buffett’s approach to reading financial statements. Three and a half years later, that portfolio is up 33.4%.
No active trading. No complex modelling. No tips from anyone. Just a spreadsheet, eight years of freely available data, and two questions for every company: does this business have a durable competitive advantage — and is the price fair?
This newsletter is about how I did it, how I could do it better, and how you can do it too.
How it started
I’d been reading about investing for years but could never find a method that was both rigorous and practical. Most books described metrics that were either difficult to calculate or buried deep in financial reports. I wanted something I could actually use with free, publicly available data.
The answer came from Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements by Mary Buffett and David Clark. The book walks through more than 50 financial signals Warren Buffett uses when evaluating a company. I found that nine of them were consistently visible on free financial websites — and that MSN Money provided eight years of historical data, where most sites only show three or four. Eight years matters because Buffett’s whole approach is built on consistency over time.
I built a spreadsheet, screened a list of ASX companies, and bought seven. (The QSuper Self Invest option I was using required a minimum trade size of $2,000 — with $22,000 available, seven companies was the right number to be properly invested without spreading too thin.)
I’ve since used the same framework to buy other ASX, NZX and US companies via Sharesies and have had similar and even better success.
The track record
Rio Tinto (RIO) +93.9%
JB Hi-Fi (JBH) +75.8%
Brambles (BXB) +46.8%
The Lottery Corporation (TLC) +16.3%
Car Group (CAR) +14.7%
Harvey Norman (HVN) +3.3%
Super Retail Group (SUL) -1.8%
Portfolio total +33.4%
Not every pick was perfect. Two are essentially flat. But the overall result is what the method promises: own good businesses at fair prices long enough, and the compounding does the work.
Who this is for
Australian and New Zealand investors who want to invest in individual companies — not just index funds — but don’t want to spend hours buried in annual reports or pay hundreds of dollars for professional data services.
The Buffett framework is not complicated. The spreadsheet I use is free to all subscribers. What takes time is running it across hundreds of companies, calculating fair value ranges, and tracking which high-quality businesses are approaching sensible prices. That’s what this newsletter does.
What you get
Free subscribers receive all educational posts: the framework explained, how to calculate fair value, case studies on real companies, and portfolio updates.
Paid subscribers (NZD $15/month) receive the quarterly screen results of over 100 companies from the ASX, NZX, NYSE and NASDAQ — scored, ranked, and with fair value ranges calculated — in a downloadable Excel file you can sort and filter however you like. Plus a monthly price-check update and full portfolio disclosures.
A note on scope
The screen is designed for operating businesses — companies that sell products or services with identifiable profit margins. Banks, insurance companies, and property trusts are excluded. These businesses have fundamentally different financial structures: a bank’s income comes from interest rather than sales, leverage is a normal part of how they operate rather than a warning sign, and concepts like gross profit don’t apply in the same way. Applying the standard metrics to them would produce meaningless results. They’re great businesses in their own right — just not ones this particular framework is designed to evaluate.
This newsletter is general financial education, not personalised financial advice. It does not take into account your individual circumstances. Always do your own research or consult a licensed financial adviser.
