Category: Finance, Personal Finance.
It has been said that we have left behind the Industrial Age and are now in the Information Age.
Thanks to the internet, we now have huge amounts of information, all available at the click of a mouse. How true that is. A hundred years ago, people mainly had to contend with their neighbors popping around for a chat, bringing news with them. Then with the advent of the telephone, all that was, radio and television multiplied many times over. They had to decide if this was news or gossip. The internet has further compounded that problem. He's 87 years old, but quite savvy, largely homebound on the computer.
I was chatting to my old granduncle the other day. He used to spend his time surfing the web. I asked him why he was no longer interested in the web. He said he was back to reading books. There is so much there to read, I said. The internet was either full of information that was no longer relevant, or just plain nonsense.
His reply? I' ll admit, I was a bit startled. Anyone and everyone is an expert in something nowadays. I' ve since been spending more time surfing around, and I think what he says is true. In the old days, you would get junk too. For example, if you go to the library, the books it has have been reviewed by someone purchasing it. But usually, if you needed proper information or news about something, there were several reliable sources, where someone else may hopefully have reviewed the information first.
Certain newspapers are more known to provide reliable information than others. On the internet, it is hard, sometimes to differentiate real information from junk. Medical journals are peer reviewed. An official looking website, someone who claims to be an authority, the opinion has, and suddenly become a fact. There must be hundreds of websites all providing information. I found innumerable blogs with all kinds of opinions and facts on them, with no apparent regulator. There was even one that proudly announced it was providing" non- news" !
I read an article in a medical newsletter recently with some amusement and a little sadness. The information on wikipedia can be adjusted by anyone and put up as fact. One author had written a spoof article and was quite surprised when he was later approached by people asking which journal the information was taken from and what he thought of the study! I must say it was very well- written, with a fake journal cited, a complete discussion, lots of figures of the results etc. He decided he had to explain that this subsequent article was also a spoof. But I would have thought a study on the benefits of alcohol prescribed to patients post- operatively would have raised some suspicions. We didn' t think we would get it, so we didn' t bother to apply" would have tipped a few off!
Little things like" We do not have approval from the Ethics Committee for this study. So what about financial advice? The key to knowing which is which is financial education. There's obviously good financial advice, and there is bad advice. If you don' t know what to do with your money, many others will have lots of ideas. It is not a particular investment that is risky, it is an uninformed investor that is risky. It is always best to be able to make an informed decision yourself.
It is best that you should manage your own investments. Find out how your financial advisor gets paid. Be an educated consumer. Does he get a commission for selling the product to you. What are his credentials? How much? What is his experience?
A few additional points on when to fire your advisor. Ask your advisor whether he makes his money giving financial advice, or whether he is financially successful himself, and gets his income from elsewhere. Don' t take advice from someone who insists he should be in charge of your finances. A good financial advisor should make you more money, not charge you money to make himself richer and you poorer. Be very careful of cold calls selling you life insurance or financial products. It sounds like I' m against financial advisors. It is better to drive a car yourself as you are in control.
I' m not. But for someone who has no idea how to drive a car, it is much safer to let someone else drive it. Just a few more comments on financial" information" brochures, as they are, or advertisements more accurately called. But choose your driver carefully. They are precisely that. The purpose is to get you to buy the products. Advertisements.
Take time to find out who is getting richer- you, or the guy selling it. Risks and potential losses are never in bold large font right at the beginning. Learn to read the fine print. I' ve seen brochures which scream" get 20% returns! !", only to follow the little asterisk to read" returns are not guaranteed. It doesn' t mean you never buy anything! May sustain losses on principal sum. " Never buy what you don' t understand.
It means you take time to learn before you put your hard- earned money in. And when he buys a stock or business, he's very confident of his choice. Warren Buffett, possibly the greatest investor today, says he spends a lot more time reading and learning, than buying anything. He puts in a large amount, and he holds it forever. But the price you pay for not taking a little time to be more critical of the information you get may be very high financially. It may seem so much easier to just accept the first bit of information you get as gospel truth. Take time to think!
It's ironic that in this age where we have more information than we can handle, many people have forgotten how to think. Today, we are being bombarded with information from all directions, from many sources. Maybe that's why my 87 year old granduncle gave up on the internet, and has gone back to reading books!