Have you had a financial discussion with your parents?
Do you talk with your friends?
How many people actually have a honest discussion with their financial adviser? But then again how many financial advisers can be trusted?
How did you learn about money?
How did you learn about savings and investments?
I think for many of us we don't talk with many people about money matters.
I learnt about savings from my dad. He talked to me about saving for a rainy day, being frugal, assessing the value of things and asking me to consider other options and opportunity costs before making a purchase. If I spend money here, means I don't have money to spend somewhere else.
And I further increased my financial knowledge in school. Where I majored in banking and finance.
So that's where I learnt more about investments, options, bonds, and other financial products.
I learnt a lot more about insurance from my stint with Prudential. I didn't do well as a financial adviser cos I just can't sell stuff that I don't believe in myself. The products are fine... except personally, I don't see why people would want to buy them, considering that there are other cheaper alternatives out there.
But when I look at my wife, the story is very different.
She hasn't had much financial training. She hasn't talked much about finances before meeting me. So the whole idea of money and what to do with it... basically doesn't exist.
Money is to be spent. People earn money, so that they can buy things and enjoy themselves.
And that's it... that's what most people think money is for.
Think about it.
If you somehow didn't get any financial knowledge. You may not know much about interest. Or compounding interest.
You may not know about insurance and how important it is.
You won't know about dividends and investing and creating a passive income stream.
You might hear stories about how your friend speculated in the stock market and made a lot of money and lost a lot of money. So it's natural for some people to view the stock market as a gambling house.
How many people view money as options?
No... I think most people just think of money as just to be used to buy stuff.
Whereas a lot of us, we view money as a lot more than that. If you've done quite a bit of reading into financial matters. You'll see money as options. The more money you have the more options you have. You can have the option to buy a car, but you don't buy a car. You have the option to buy an expensive meal. But you might not buy the expensive meal.
HOWEVER, once you exercise the option and actually buy the car, then your options decrease. Cos your money is now less. So there's less options.
And it's interesting. Where did most of us learn our financial knowledge from?
I'm pretty sure it's not from school.
Most likely, our financial habits are from our parents. We watch them do, or don't do, then we follow.
Many families view money as a taboo topic. They don't know how to talk about it. Don't dare to talk about it. It's as if talking about it will make it disappear. Especially the older folks, many don't understand money. And there's always a fear of the unknown. Such a confusing topic, and when people talk about it, most of the time it's to sell you something. Or one of their friends trying to take a loan from them.
Another place we learn our financial knowledge if probably from ourselves. We make our own mistakes and learn from them. Some people make mistakes and learn. Some people might not learn and just stay financially illiterate.
Or we may have interest and read up by ourselves and go online and watch lots of YouTube channels about finance and how to FIRE.
And the thing is... actually, we don't talk about money much.
Somehow it's not cool to talk about saving, waiting for investment opportunities, retirement planning, etc. How many friends do you talk to about money? Very little right? You all can talk about a lot of other stuff, but money and financial plans... not so much. Do you all even talk about insurance? Maybe you found a nice interesting insurance product and it's a good product. Would you share it with your friends?
If you see a friend going down a financial highway disaster, would you try to talk to them?
So... it's really strange. We talk about girls, food, cars, our children, our holidays, our work, how so and so is doing, etc... and yet, we don't talk about money. We don't discuss it and share ideas.
Heck, many families don't talk about it among themselves. They don't teach their kids good financial habits. Maybe cos the parents themselves don't have good financial habits?
Maybe the parents themselves don't understand money very well and... well it's human nature to avoid topics which you don't understand... like... I don't talk about astrophysics right...
So I really think people should talk more about money. Or be willing to discuss and talk to others and share ideas. You know... like I have a friend whom we talk about finances and opportunities and wonder why do people spend so much.
I mean... money and financial planning is such a large part of our lives and yet so many people don't understand it well. What it can do, how to plan for the future, etc...
And the big question is... WHY?!
It's just one of those things.
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