Is your prosperous retirement a reality or a dream? Over the past 24 hours, I have been spending time with one of my Mentors and as always, my Moleskine notepad took a hammering as I jotted down several pages of gold. Freshly fueled with a swag of new ideas and brain buzzing. I went through my daily morning ritual today (Bloomberg, what the markets did, and what headlines are dominating the day, amongst other things).
To my horror, I was greeted with a story on News.com that related to whether the above tagline “Is a prosperous retirement a reality or dream?” and the answer to that ironically comes down to exactly what my Mentor and I were talking about just this morning.
“Are you interested or are you committed?”
You see, on the surface, everyone is interested – they come to seminars, download e-books, come to webinars and get all the information that there is out there. They digest it, think about it, frame it with previous experiences. Maybe even look at things in more detail and talk to their friends about it. Then think about it some more and, before you know it, that is the end of the “interested” journey.
It is an information gathering exercise, fueling knowledge. Providing some fodder for a conversation over the barbeque and creates “arm chair experts”.
Let’s be brutally honest – Arm chair experts don’t enjoy a prosperous retirement. They know a lot about everything, but they don’t apply much of it.
The difference between Interested and Committed is one word, ACTION. You see to have more, you have to become more – gain the knowledge – just like the interested person. But then apply it. Learn, see and do it.
What are we missing?
Sadly, the action step of actually doing is missed by so many people. Because they are fearful. Instead of having control and making it happen, they doubt themselves. Perhaps instead of avoiding the ownership of the decisions and give it all away to someone else. When it comes to investing, that may be in the shape of managed funds. I read the other day that in the managed funds space, 70% of the actively managed funds under-perform their benchmark. Can you believe that?
Think about that for a moment – almost ¾ of actively managed funds under-perform. Yet people willing give their money over to someone else, and hope that it works out. Why on earth would people elect to take this course of action? Perhaps because your financial planner said so? I hope not! Or maybe, because this is the easy path?
According to this morning’s story, “many Australians having little control over when, why and how they’ll enter retirement” and that is because they tried to take the easy path – giving it to someone else to do for you…
Is that what you really want?
I doubt that. By virtue of you reading this email, of course you are interested and we are glad to help. But today is about changing gears, from interested to committed.
Committed does not have to be hard – in fact when you get the facts, you will realise that our processes have made being committed easier than ever. So rather than me continue typing, take an action step now. Register here
Have a chat with one of our team and see how we can assist you in taking a few simple steps may well help you have the retirement that you create, not that you hope of. Being brutally honest, you and I both know “hope” will never actually happen – and I quote “The world’s most dangerous drug is Hopeium!”
Right, time for me to get back to my Mentor, and unearth some more nuggets of gold. Meantime, make the time to talk to my team, and let them help you along the path that you actually want and deserve, not simply hope of. REGISTER NOW
