The Best Investment You Can Make

It’s that time of the year again! The time where we receive our 13th month pays and Christmas bonuses is fast approaching! With this extra cash in our pockets, a common question that people may have is “What is the best investment that I can get into with these extra funds?”

Mutual funds? UITF (Unit Investment Trust Fund)? Stock Market? Real estate?

While it might be easy to go all crazy and invest everywhere with such a wide variety of options, it’s important to remember that we’re more prone to get scammed if we rush in without doing the proper research beforehand. Accumulating wealth is a process that takes time. You’re never going to see any person that became a millionaire in just 1 day anywhere.

Well, you’ve read this far into the post, so you must be itching to know what is the best investment you can get into! And I’m here to say that the best investment you can make is…

Invest in yourself! I know it sounds very cliché but when you think about it, it’s an investment that will never end up in a loss. Investing in yourself means that you take the time and effort to learn a new skill, develop new relationships, and experience new things. Money may come and go, but the things you learn, develop, and experience are yours to keep. No one can take them away from you.

Everyone on Earth has the same 24 hours in a day, so why is there such a varied distribution in everyone’s achievements, experiences, and wealth? This is because while we all have the same amount of time, we all use it differently.

Successful people are successful not just because they have great talent in their fields, but because they know that no matter how great they are, there is always something new out there to learn. They know how to maximize their time, maximize their alloted 24 hours in a day.

So next time you find yourself with some time to spare, why not use it to learn a new skill? Or maybe do something that you’ve always wanted to do. These may not have any monetary return on investment, but it will be an experience nonetheless. And you can use such experience to help guide you in future decisions.

Now, you might be thinking “I don’t have free time.” Well, if there’s one thing that COVID has brought us, it’s free time. We’re all stuck in our homes, unable to go out freely for the foreseeable future. Take this time and use it to invest in yourself.

One day in the future, you’ll look back on this day and thank yourself. You’ll be proud of yourself for going out of your comfort zone and trying something new.

But even with new found knowledge, going on with life without applying it is useless. It would be foolish of you to think that your life would change without you doing anything to change it.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

Henry David Thoreau

In my personal experience, I have been studying on finance everyday since I’ve become a Financial Advisor. I do so because I want to be able to give sound advice to my friends and clients. Truth be told, it’s a never-ending grind on my part, as there will always be something more to learn. But despite all of this, I hustle and pour out all my energy on it because I know that doing so will certainly bear fruit in the future.

How about you? What do you want to work on today? Change that “I’ll do it next time” to “I’ll start doing it now”. In these situations, it’s better to just start without overly dwelling over the details. If you constantly worry about failure or rejections, you won’t have enough time to actually do anything.

Change equals self-improvement. Push yourself to places you haven’t been before.

Pat Summitt

But when you are faced with failure, don’t give up! It’s easy for us to see success stories where everything just fell into place for them and get envious when the same doesn’t happen to you. But what you don’t see behind those success stories are the countless hours of hard work that was put into it. What you don’t see are the numerous failures they encountered before finally succeeding. Failure may be a setback but remember that it’s also your First Attempt In Learning. You can also join my FB group for additional learnings.