During the 2013 Chinese New Year, I got to meet a very interesting 26 years old. His name is Michael (name changed), and he happened to be my subscriber, my customer for REITMethod and RetireMethod course, plus, a hometown junior who’s from my alma mater. He’s currently an engineer at a leading MNC, who already owns 2 properties at such a tender age.
He believes in financial freedom, and he believes in getting the right knowledge and learning from the right sources to get there – eventually. He told me how he started with all this – is that he too, made money mistakes in the first 2 years of working. He spent all the money he had, and realized this cannot continue forever. Hence, he started to learn about personal finance, slowly but surely. Among his first endeavor was to enroll in KCLau’s Money Automation System course – which he found insanely useful, especially the part where it uses Google Calendar to remind you about bill payments, etc. While talking to Michael, I can see that he is definitely empowered to take charge of his financial freedom – in his own terms. You can just see that in his eyes.
And then he got interested about independent financial advisory services, a profession which I am currently in now. Like many people I talked too, he didn’t fully understand what it is about, or how it is different from what’s already in the market. Of course, he knows and heard about authority figure in the independent financial advisory services the likes of Yap Ming Hui.
But this is where the misconception started – he, like many people, believe such services are only for the rich or wealthy. True, it is not a secret that Mr Yap’s boutique FA firm started off by serving primarily high net worth clients. But then he also had a change of heart somewhere in the journey and also helps the middle class achieve financial freedom – the result of it which, was documented in the book RoadMap to Financial Freedom.
In fact, to some extent, middle class (with at least university education) are the ones who need it the most. No offence to anyone, but financial freedom is a concept that need to seed inside one’s mind before he would be receptive to the benefits that independent financial advisory services could provide. Someone who is not too educated could be harder to accept this concept. For Michael, he is already open to what I have to say because the idea itself already take seed. Law of Attraction anyone?
Here’s his message to me one day after we met.
Of course, I also encounter people from the other extreme end of the spectrum.
People who questioned me – “Who are you to tell me about financial freedom? You already achieved it already meh?”
Truly, I have not. And I don’t have the best answer for this or twist it around to convince you that I am a few levels above you which makes me qualified to teach you everything about financial freedom.
But I am working towards it? Hell yes.
Do I believe in it? Double yes.
I believe in adding value to people’s life with integrity and helping other achieving what they want, I will also eventually achieve what I want.
An analogy here:
Does it mean a doctor cannot get sick AT ALL? No!
But would you be less convinced if a doctor ask you to live healthily while he himself is obese? Of course!
I hope you get my point.
Likewise, who am I to tell you about this if I were a heavy spender with loads of bad credit card debt, right? In that case, if we meet in person, I have no problem to show you my CCRIS report 🙂
The takeaway today is this – if you were to benchmark yourself against Michael while you were at his age, are you way better or way worse?
I am nowhere at his level when I was 26.
*Shamefully admit that at that age, I am still not financially literate, and was still engrossed in playing computer games*
How about you?