Money Make

It’s Sunday afternoon and the weekend is nearly over. There is one thing that has dawned on me this weekend is that I went to a bike ride on Saturday morning and on the way home, I bought the Financial Review and also the Saturday paper.

I normally don’t read the paper (are you in shock?) because of the negative and toxic information it contains (I’ll explain more in another post) but mainly because I needed to look at the current property market because there’s been a huge shift in development.

Anyway, reading the Financial Review got me thinking about some advice that was given. There was a column in the paper that tells readers on how to beat the rate rise. Basically in a nutshell, in order to beat the rate rise, you could make extra repayments to your mortgage so you could reduce your outstanding debt and save in interest repayments in the long term.

My previous financial advisor recommends this option as well.

However, I’ve also studied alot of financial books of well known Millionaires who have made it and they completely say that you should not bother reducing your mortgage repayments.

If you’re an avid reader like me, you’ll notice that there is alot of contradicting information out there that conflicts with each other. Therefore, the question remains, which financial advice should you take? I guess this depends on you. You need to make a decision based on your findings and assessments.

Now back to the advice that was given in the Financial Review. Should I focus my energy in reducing my debt in my house? In my opinion. No. The reason is because I know that if I continually spend my time trying to reduce my debts, minimize my spendings, expenses etc, I’m really playing the money game to “not loose” By the time I’m in a suitable position to start investing my money, it may be too late. I could be very old and whatever I invest in, the growth will still take years for it to develop into income.

I’m also careful of the information I receive from a particular source. I need to find out whether the person who is giving the advice is from a credible source. Is the person working in a job giving me advice on how to not have a job? Sometimes I wonder about the articles that are written in the paper. Most people giving financial advice are trained to be good writers, not financial advisors with results.

That being said, a few years ago, I met with a financial advisor. He gave me various advice on investing and what not. However, the was one advice that he gave me that I always remembered. I told him that I was starting a business and that I wanted to make it successful. He told me “But then you’ll have to worry about your taxes, why not use your Masters degree and get a job?” I thank my lucky stars that I ignored that piece of advice because if I took his advice there, I would of not make money online, traveled the world and turned my finances around. Although the advice was still sound, my instincts told me I should follow my heart.

I guess when you reach that fork in the road of which financial advice you should take, the answer is, follow your heart.