Financial abundance

Investing to grow personally and financially.

When I thought of investing a few years ago, I thought of the stock market. Today I would say investing comes in more flavors and the most import once for me are personal development and financial investment.

Why invest?

I invest to grow to gain more then I currently have. It is an investment in my future and that is why I think personal investment is as important for a wealthy future as financial investment. The reason I do the thing I do is because I want to be a super dad, a great example for my kids and help them become the best version of themselves. This I can only do if I am the best version of myself and to be honest that probably is not going to happen if I grow and learn and change a few habits.

Personal development, a great investment?

Why invest in myself when, I started working someone told me you are never done learning. I thought yeah right, I have spent years and years learning and learning now I know enough and yes, I made a mistake there. To be honest I guess most people do or still do make this mistake. But what I already had in my mind early on was that I did not believe in only learning more technical skills, yes this might help, but I noticed all around me that people were struggling with their “soft” skills.

At first, I thought how is this possible, that so many people seem to just take a lot for granted and are fine with the state of things. We have always done it this way, was one of the mottos I heard. I tried to change the world around me and noticed that is not going to work and that is how I became a fan of self-development. I would grow myself, learning to be the best version of myself, learning how to deal with other people better, influence them and learn how to make great connections and lasting relations.

Investing in personal development, will also have a return on investment.

I noticed that the more I grow as a person I also gain higher raises in pay, people see that I grow as a person and give credit for it. This is why I see personal development as a way of gaining more not only in finances but also more in daily life in the form of fulfillment and happiness.

Financial investment.

Next to personal development, the biggest area where of investment I see is financial investment. Around 5 years ago I got the plan that I wanted to be able to stop working when I was 60, I went to my financial adviser and ask what do I have to do to make this happen. He told me that I should invest € 300,- a month each month for 30 years and I would have a high change of releasing this dream. He told me about a managed fund which would fit and has low cost and an average return over the last few years of 6%. This seemed like a good idea, so I started my financial investment journey on this road.

Paying a premium vs doing it yourself.

To be honest I still invest that 300 a month, because it is easy, I do not have to think about it and I do not mis the money. But after reading books like rich dad poor dad and unshakable I saw other possibilities as well and started investing myself.

we will not go into depth in this blog about investing, but I will highlight a few things to now. If you use a managed fund you pay a premium that is mostly higher, this premium eats away your gains and in the long run cost you quiet a lot of money. The alternative is doing it yourself. This means you could buy for example ETF, these come in many forms but one of the most popular forms is index trackers, for example the 500 biggest companies of America. The big plus here is that you have a high spread in 500 proven companies and a little bit of dividend each year as a bonus. ETF are popular because they have a relative low cost of maintenance and they come in many different forms (index trackers, rare metals, industries etc). Next to ETF you can buy stocks in companies, the risk here is that if one companies stock drops you will notice this directly and to avoid this risk you need to build up a spread of different stocks yourself. Dependent on the ETF the spread of ETF’s is higher, meaning the risk is lower but also the potential rewards are lower as well.

In a next blog I will go deeper into investing financially, but I hope this gave you some insight in my opinion the two most import investment areas.