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All the time on the news you hear about people who think that to be money smart and book smart are the same. People believe that if you have a good job and can pay your bills that you are fine. It's like in health, most people think the absence of pain is health. So the absence of financial trouble is good finances. That cannot be farther from the truth. I have a relative that is very smart. He has worked his whole life as an engineer and knows a heck of a lot. When he reached retirement age he had put so much money away that he and his wife would be fine for the rest of their life. his wife has never really had to work during their married life together.
He decided that since he is retired he would use his money in the stock market to create even more wealth for them. He thought that he could do it himself, for the most part. He did several things wrong. First he didn't invest in education first. Take several classes from experts in stock. It sounds so simple, buy low - sell high. Yet there is more to it than that. he then invested more than he could afford to lose. He took his own advice and put it in the stocks he chose rather than the stocks the market said are undervalued.
Now they are looking for jobs to have money during retirement. I have friends and acquaintances that follow the same path. It really bothers me that people don't realize just how money works. They think there house is an asset when it really is not. I know you can sell your house for a profit in the future yet until you sell it it is costing you money. Even if you pay off the mortgage you pay taxes and maintenance. Assets are not meant to take money from you. They put money in your pocket. I think that is one of the many ideas people used to get themselves into the mess we are in right now. They used their house like a checking account. Borrowing the equity to buy more stuff. Now that the market has tanked they are upside down and feel their biggest asset is now gone. They are letting the house go to foreclosure and moving on.
I think people have bought too much into the sales pitch of the financial world and not enough into the reality of finances. Money really isnt that hard to understand yet it is not taught. All w learn is to save money in the bank, live below our means, do what our leaders tell us to do and diversify for protection for the long term.
Lets take the time to debunk these now.
Saving money in the bank- This advice is a major one that came from people who lived during the depression. back then it was very good advice. Even during the 1950's this advice worked. IT was hard to lose the value of your money so all you had to do was set enough aside. In 1971 this advice became obsolete. President Nixon took us off the Gold Standard completely and made our money a floating currency with a value that could be controlled and moved around. The value of our money went from having Gold in a vault to back it up to a promise from the government that it was worth something. Since then you need to think about money less on the face value of the dollar bill and more on the percieved value of the bill, or its spending power. The one dollar bill has not changed in face value since 1930 yet it buys you far less than it did back then. A can of soda back then may have been a penny or dime while now it costs around a dollar for the same amount of soda. This process of our money losing its spending value is what is called inflation. This is why your house goes up in resell value. It is not that your house is worth more it is that the dollar value is dropping and requiring more dollars to buy the same thing. Because of inflation any money you save will slowly lose its spending power and be worth less. If this is your retirement plan you will find out when you use the money that it does not buy as much as it used to. Putting your money into an investment that will give you a return that is greater than the inflation rate is the best way to preserve your money.
Live below your means- This advice is not explained very well to most people. Most people believe what this means is that we get a job and whatever they decide to pay us we have to change our dreams and habits to make sure we live below the level of income they give us. This advice just makes no sense to me. I admit that I enjoy having nice things and being able to travel and buy stuff that I want to have. All my life I was told "We can't afford that" and so just because we didn't have that much money I could not have what I wanted. There really are two camps of thought on this belief. The purists who really do live below their means and deal with whatever problems come their way they can't afford and the ones who think I can afford this payment. They are living below their means to the extent that they can make all the payments they have with their income. These people usually end up in major problems during hard times. They may lose their job or become injured or have other reasons their income lowers and they end up in a spiral of robbing peter to pay paul. Most of the time this happens during the holidays. They just charge it and pay it off by next christmas. They think that so long as they can afford the payment they are ok. Not realizing how much money is leaving their pocket in interest payments. They look rich yet they are cash poor. They leverage their future to have what they want today.
The Purists basically change their life to fit into their budget. If there is a job change they just live cheaper. They do tend to fare better in hard times because they usually own what they have and have money saved somewhere to help out. however they tend to live a life of little disappointments telling themselves why they can't have it. It is almost like hitting yourself every time you see something you want. They thrive on old technology and give in to what the boss pays them.
Sometimes people do take the effort to improve their education or work to get a raise so they can increase their means a little. This is good for the purists and bad for the spenders since they will just be making more payments now.
Our education system is set up to encourage us to listen to the teacher and not question what we are learning. To be fair you can ask questions yet when it reaches the point of questioning the teacher the student usually is put in their place. I'm sure we've all seen this happen in school. It is an authoritarian way to learn. It reinforces discipline and obedience. Now these are not bad things yet what about helping the kids to learn instead of telling them what to learn. We test kids so we make sure they are remembering the stuff we want them to remember. One thing we need to always remember is that your learning really begins when your formal education ends. The school system is about regurtitating facts and figures. Real learning is about discovery and opening your mind. I have spent a lot of time studying and learning on my own. I think I have learned more since graduating college than I learned in college. Some of the subjects I have studied a lot are: Quantum Mechanics, Psychology, Medicine, Nutrition, Astronomy, String Theory, Math, Chemistry, Economics, Economic history, U.S. history, Europe History, and many others.
While I think what I learned in school was good it pales in comparison to how much I have learned since then. I chose to teach others in a way that is not so much
"Do what I tell you" rather more " here is the direction to look for the answer". Teaching using the latest techniques and helping people to discover how to learn will make a world of difference in our learning.
Diversify for the Long term- I think anyone who has worked to understand the Economic crisis we are going through has realized how bad this advice is. Diversifying your portfolio has shown to be the best way to lower returns and easiest way to lose money in stocks. The thing to consider when someone tells you to diversify is are you really diversifying or not? you may be buying lots of different stocks in different sectors of the market yet your money is still all in paper assets. If the market hits a hard time they all go down. Diversifying works better when you are talking about having money in different asset classes. By this I mean owning some stock, having physical gold or silver (stocks & gold tend to work inversely of each other), owning some real estate and even having a business. This is why the rich usually don't lose money and everyone else does. It is extremely rare to have all asset classes go down at the same time ( if they are diversifying is the least of your worries). This way you can always have money flowing regardless of how things work out. Most asset classes go through phases where they are good then spend time being low. Knowing this trend will help you know where to put your money.
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