The 11 Best Articles for Your Financial Health (Mar. 2018)

The 11 Best Articles for Your Financial Health (Mar. 2018)

"If instant success is the only option, we will be disappointed 99% of the time."
http://www.montanamoneyadventures.com/why-we-should-avoid-the-success-stories/

"...the Western mindset sees a “crisis” as something negative, the Chinese word includes both – the danger and the opportunity."
http://www.financial-imagineer.com/2017/12/13/why-you-should-learn-how-the-chinese-manage-wealth/

"...monetary policy is reaching the end of its efficacy...central banks have needed to take more desperate and more frequent actions as those actions become less effective."
https://www.greedometer.com/interactive-greedometer/marketcrash2018/

"Investments with these five characteristics have been profitable over time, but typically are not very exciting...We are in the business of helping to maximize the wealth of our clients, not the financial services industry."
https://ezinearticles.com/?Five-Excellent-Investment-Characteristics&id=8734136

"The Nightmare on Wall Street is only a spooky story told to drive media ratings."
http://jlcollinsnh.com/2018/03/16/stocks-part-xxxii-why-you-should-not-be-in-the-stock-market/

"As you can see, compounding doesn't really do much during the first few years...The longer your money remains invested, however, the more powerful compounding becomes."
https://www.getrichslowly.org/power-of-compounding/

"...there was a hot new company everyone was talking about called the South Sea Company...Sir Isaac Newton noticed, and wanted in on the action. So he bought in...Newton, being no dummy, figured things were getting out of hand and quietly started eyeing the exit even as more idiots were jumping in. He got out...netting a cool 207% gain...He knew this was a bubble. And he knew a crash was coming. But then something strange happened. A crash...didn't come.

"...he bought back into the bubble, KNOWING it was a bubble...when the dust had settle[d], Newton had lost over £20,000. It was Sir Isaac Newton's entire life savings."
https://www.millennial-revolution.com/invest/workshop-invest/investment-workshop-27-bubble/

"By developing creativity, resilience, adaptability, and perseverance, I was able to...retire decades before everyone else--even people who grew up rich...Privilege makes people soft."
https://www.millennial-revolution.com/build/privilege-makes-soft/

"Innovation is good; financial innovation is bad...the robo[-advisor] industry, looking for extra sources of revenue, is therefore beginning to move away from the passive-investing ideals that excited so many of its early adopters."
https://www.wired.com/story/beware-roboadvisors-wealthfront-betterment/

"Caplan calculates that at least half of the 67 percent premium earned by the average college graduate can be explained simply by the talent, knowledge, and discipline that they already had when they arrived for freshman orientation. Much of the rest, he argues, is merely a signal to employers..."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-higher-education-has-little-incentive-to-deliver-better-value/2018/03/08/a02684e0-224a-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html

Everybody makes mistakes; what's important is that you learn from them:
"A credit card is not an 'income stretcher'...The interest rates will cripple you."
http://makingmomentum.net/stupid-money-mistakes/

BONUS:
If you're interested in discovering a variety of great blogs, check out this list of great bloggers (including me!): https://websitepromoter.co.uk/finance-blogs/

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Jump in!

I found this article interesting: http://lifehacker.com/move-before-you-re-ready-get-started-without-being-an-1654826130

Learning skills as you need them can increase both your motivation to learn the material (because you need it now!) and your engagement with the subject material. This increased motivation and engagement can lead to a deeper, richer understanding--and a quicker acquisition of that deeper, richer understanding!

This flies in the face of the advice that you usually hear about planning ahead and learning everything about a subject before doing it--but such advice does not account for constraints of time, motivation, and cognitive ability. This advice to "jump in and learn on the fly" does.

How does this apply to personal finance? Well, I'm a big proponent of keeping things simple. So, if you start out keeping your budget (and your investments) as simple as possible, and only learn about new things when they come up, you'll be more likely to actually accomplish something (rather than putting it off for a day...or a year). And who wouldn't like to accomplish more?!

Definitely an interesting idea, and a great read!