Have you ever picked up the financial section of your local newspaper or watched the economic news.
A big section is reserved for numbers, all over the page.
For some those numbers are a dream come true, for others they are their worst nightmares.
I’m talking about the page which lists all the stocks and their current values.
Many people pin their futures to these numbers.
Back in my teens my father used to subscribe to a magazine full of stocks from all over the world.
It seemed rather funny to me why about 80% of the magazine consisted entirely of numbers. And I was even more baffled when he seemed so interested in them.
Before I get into why we should all study investing I thought I should take the time to define what investing means.
My personal definition is the application of certain goods in the hopes of achieving a certain result, often times more of what you invested.
For most people investing means money. But you can also invest time, effort, and love.
These 4 things invested properly will reap big rewards.
More money, more choices.
More time, more freedom.
The simple reason why we all should invest our time learning how to invest is because we never know what will happen tomorrow.
Today we have our health, we have a job, we have free time and we have money.
But any one of those can disappear for any number of reasons.
Restructuring, an economic crisis, an accident, an error in judgment, or what they call “a black swan event” (something big that comes as a surprise and has a powerful effect) such as the tsunami that hit Japan.
The best time to prepare for something is when we don’t need to.
If we wait till we need to, it is often too late.
When we’re young it’s hard to imagine that one day we’ll be old, even though we know it’s a fact.
So often we can only see what’s right in front of us but each of us needs to look into our own personal crystal ball and see where our actions and choices are taking us and decide whether we should change.
I have invested in two companies to date, stocks, gold, my book, this site, learning magic, and Japanese.
And my investments have paid off nicely.
This year I hope to add real estate, a new book and a coaching program.
I will keep my fingers crossed that I have done my homework and they’ll allow me to invest even more next year.
And slowly but surely I’ll achieve more of what I want; more time, more money and more influence.
So…what are you investing in?
Adrian Shepherd