Investing In Yourself

How many of us here have fallen into scams and schemes that offer impossibly high returns? Or invest into unit trust based on the advice of a fellow friend or family that just started his/her part time unit trust career? How about rushing to make a buy at the stock market just because you heard a so called "insider" news from a friend? What about some of us whom are totally ignorant about investment, living in denial and believing that KWSP and fixed deposit savings is going to ensure your retirement?

Majority of us, at least at one point of our lives would have come across one of the situations above. The lucky one's actually made a profit while the majority end up losing their money. Temptation, impatience, "kiasu" and greed are the key driving emotions that cause many to lose their savings. Ignorance on the other hand makes us poor, requiring us to work for almost our entirely life to pay off debts and making ends meet.

While we throw a million excuses to our spouses, parent and family for our losses, our lack of money or how we end up in debt, the fact remains the same that we as human beings, blessed with a conscious mind have failed to utilized what's most precious to us! 

The author of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" quoted in this in one of his books; 

"If you want to become rich and not be a victim of global changes, it is important that you develop the greatest lever of all: your mind. If you to be rich and keep your wealth, your mind - your financial education - is your greatest lever of all"

The greatest investment one can make above all is an investment into knowledge for our minds. Donald Trump, a successful businessman and real estate developer finds time to read in the wee hours of the morning all for the purpose of adding more knowledge.

The founding father of America, Benjamin Franklin once quoted;

"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest"

How true indeed especially when you see influential and successful personalities (who have made more money then they ever could spend in a lifetime), are continuously adding more wealth for themselves. Wealth not in terms of $$$ but wealth of knowledge and wisdom!

Personally, I had my own share of losses in scams and get rich schemes during my younger years. I realized that if I've started my learning about personal finance and investing just a wee bit earlier, the possibility of falling into a scam would have been minimal. The Chinese have a saying that when you lose in gambling/investment, treat it as a tuition fee. Losing my hard earned money is an expensive tuition fee indeed, yet that experience taught me to become more financially savvy. Remember, when you "invest" without prior knowledge or know-how, that's called gambling. 

With the advent of the World Wide Web and Google, we are gifted with the opportunity to learn that our parents never had. By leveraging upon the many resources and tools available on the internet, you're now the master of your own knowledge gain.

I gained most of my knowledge from the internet, blogging, discussions and reading. Listening to the experiences of people in investing and personal finance is also an effective way for me to gain knowledge. The plus point is that I'm both inspired by success stories and cautioned by how other's failure. The one thing I have yet to grasp is the art of filtering valuable from trashy information.

It's never too late or too early for anyone to start taking control of their finances and ultimately their life. By reading this post, you've already taken the first step towards that goal.. All you need is a little grit and a whole lot of enthusiasm to make things work. Start now by making the best investment of all, an investment in knowledge!

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