Are we all just slaves?
I attended a meeting last week and observed the trains in a mess with delays and cancellations on route, got to the presentation – small group training in a clients office, and couldn’t help but notice how miserable everybody looked. On the train, in the office everybody is seemed was a little pissed off.
Sure, I get it. With rent and mortgages to pay, a transport system at crisis and one of the warmest summers on record I understand that many people would be rattled.
The big thing for me, was this. How long have these people been tolerating this crap life? Certainly more than one I reckoned, and with many it could have been going on for years. No wonder everybody seems stressed and anxious. Think is I get it. Not so long ago when I was working for ‘the bank’ I was in the same boat, with a very young family and one income – things were unusually tight.
It only needs an awkward manager and your life very quickly turns to hell on earth.
Happiness | Money | Freedom
Financial plans.
I think that up there in the heavens a god sits and smiles every time someone mentions a plan, a long term investment – something for the future.
As you know full well; the future is not certain and we don’t know if any of us going to get there, we assume but don’t know if we’ll arrive. This is important, sure we need to make a plan for it just in case we arrive at that time, but there is next week or next month to consider carefully – living a life now as if it’s the only time you and I have. Now is certainly the only time we are guaranteed.
Work hard, marry, buy a house, retire. This is what I was told when growing up in the sixties – it all seemed to solid with little else to be concerned about. The path it seemed was all laid out.
This no longer happens, we never saw the rise of capitalism, the damage to the environment or political systems creaking in the middle and cracking around the edges. My grandparents would never have understood, apps, the internet, access to porn or online banking or the present situation in relation to jobs and housing.
All of use are we working harder than ever.
For me having moved through the last banking crisis and through two bouts of serious illness I realised that the financial plan I had in place was not fit for purpose.
The plan you’ll get sold by the local adviser or a bank sales person fails at almost every test.
- They won’t make your money work hard for you.
You won’t be able to have the mini retirements
You won’t be in control of your own money
- Financial advisers / financial product providers are acting in a disingenuous way. These are businesses that are they are solely to produce a profit and not to care about individual policyholders and all the bigger societal picture.
Sure, on the box they’ll tell you how important you are, and how they are better than all. Until, you’ve got the product and you phone with a query and find a ‘throw a six to start’ telephone system and then a foreign call centre…
Worse still after five years of investing you’ll have a review meeting with the adviser and they tell you that ‘they are really sorry, but the markets have just not performed as expected.’
That is the reality of modern financial planning.
As I keep saying if all you had to do was sit down in front of a financial adviser for a few hours a year in order to become financially independent we’d all be doing it and you’ll never be able to get an appointment to see one.
This question is important.
Let me ask you this who cares more about your money than you?
Which is why you should make sure you know all you can about what makes it work, what makes the difference between wealthy and poor – I assure you, the differences are few. Just a few principles keep people in the proverbial poor house.
Let’s consider carefully where we are now.
You buy a house – tens of thousands of pounds tied up in equity.
Invest in a pension – at least 30% of your fund does not benefit you because it goes in charges and your money tied up for forty years or more – and the breaking scandal is that Auto Enrolment providers are just milking consumers.
Investments – it’s exactly the same with them – returns are dire and they often lack flexibility.
The State is increasing taxes and reducing spending and this looks like it’s going to continue certainly for the foreseeable future.
And we now have all of the evidence to support another way forward – to make our money works for us rather than us working for it – this is why the rich are rich they make their money work for them,
If you do nothing but invest it until you retire which is what the industry wants you’ll be at least 70% dead before you get a chance to spend your money comma that doesn’t sound like a plan for financial independence full stop in actual fact it sounds a bit f****** mad.
Leverage money, make it work for you.
Take longer over financial decisions, there is no magic answer
Understand income producing investments these are the best to own.
Once income is paid to you it’s yours forever no one can ever take it away.
Understand why financial advisers and the industry hate peer to peer lending platforms and the related options. Understand why they will not recommend exchange traded funds, or ETF’s as they are known. These products are not widely recommended, because the industry hates them, because they work, because they work for consumers, because the industry can’t get paid for recommending them unless it charges a fee, and of course we all know the story there.
We are in a place now where we are modern money slaves, we’re all going to work every day trading precious time for money and then giving that back via charges and fees to a handful of very well remunerated advisers and providers.
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