677-Dont-Just-Stand-There-Researching...Try-It
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00:00:29.800 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:36.040 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while
00:00:40.920 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:44.360 | Today I'd like to talk with you about the value of just do it.
00:00:50.560 | Just try it.
00:00:52.320 | Just test it.
00:00:53.640 | I want to share with you two stories to drive home to you a very simple point.
00:01:01.360 | The first story has to do with investments, specifically investments in things that many
00:01:07.080 | of us have never particularly experienced, such as investing in gold.
00:01:13.960 | I was recently answering a question that somebody asked about the prospect of investing in gold.
00:01:22.380 | Now gold is one of the most hotly debated topics in the world of investing.
00:01:29.240 | There are people on one side who say nobody should ever buy gold.
00:01:32.880 | It's a worthless, useless metal.
00:01:35.000 | It's nonproductive.
00:01:37.000 | And then on the other hand, there are people who say everybody should put everything in
00:01:39.840 | gold.
00:01:40.840 | After all, it's the only thing that will stand when the world goes crazy and everything else
00:01:44.040 | goes to zero.
00:01:46.560 | So as you would imagine, people have questions on this and they want to make good decisions.
00:01:53.760 | And so when you go with a question like this and you ask for advice, the problem is you're
00:01:58.840 | simply going to receive advice from a number of different people who are operating from
00:02:03.820 | a number of different perspectives.
00:02:06.440 | Now years ago, I did not own any gold.
00:02:11.240 | I had never invested in gold and being a student of mainstream investing philosophy, I was
00:02:19.120 | under the, I was of the opinion that gold was basically a worthless investment.
00:02:26.160 | After all, it's unproductive and it doesn't really have any use.
00:02:29.520 | And I was completely convinced that gold, nobody should own gold.
00:02:34.200 | That was the advice that I used to give to people when they would ask me this question.
00:02:37.960 | Then in time, I started thinking more deeply about the issues and the questions and I started
00:02:42.560 | researching the topic of investing in gold.
00:02:45.160 | And I came to believe that there were other valid positions other than the one that I
00:02:50.880 | had.
00:02:51.880 | I wasn't sure I was wrong, but I wasn't sure anymore that I was right.
00:02:56.880 | And I didn't really know what to do.
00:02:59.360 | And somebody gave me this advice.
00:03:00.440 | They said, just go and buy a gold coin.
00:03:06.920 | And I decided, you know what, I'm just going to go and buy a gold coin.
00:03:10.800 | I'm going to see what this is like.
00:03:13.400 | Now there've been very few times in my life where I have felt dirty when doing something,
00:03:22.560 | but this was genuinely one of those times.
00:03:26.000 | I went and looked and found the information for a local coin shop right in my town.
00:03:31.880 | And then I drove to the coin shop and I had my cash in my pocket.
00:03:36.880 | Didn't really know what I was doing.
00:03:38.040 | And I went to the front door and I was, of course, a little bit weirded out by the double
00:03:42.320 | doors that coin shops always have.
00:03:45.200 | And I went in and I remember I felt like I was buying drugs.
00:03:47.760 | I felt like I was doing something illegal.
00:03:50.520 | It was so weird for me.
00:03:51.520 | I felt like I was abandoning the investment faith that had been handed down through the
00:03:55.920 | ages, that nobody should buy gold.
00:03:59.360 | But I was convinced that I wanted to buy a gold coin and see what it was like.
00:04:05.280 | And so finally the representative of the coin shop finished with their other customer and
00:04:10.000 | they were ready for me.
00:04:11.000 | And I said, "Link, I'd like to buy a gold coin, but I don't really know what to buy."
00:04:15.520 | And I started talking with them.
00:04:17.480 | And then I started asking questions about what to buy.
00:04:20.320 | And long story short, I walked out 30 minutes later with a gold coin in my pocket and more
00:04:28.440 | importantly, an education.
00:04:31.560 | Now in my case, I still remember, I still have the coin that I bought.
00:04:34.240 | I bought a one-tenth ounce gold American Eagle.
00:04:36.840 | It was probably a couple hundred bucks at the time, but that was it.
00:04:40.080 | It was a couple hundred bucks.
00:04:41.080 | And I had this little gold coin.
00:04:42.320 | And as I went home with this little gold coin, just looking at it, I had a very different
00:04:47.400 | understanding of what it was like to invest in gold than I had a couple hours earlier.
00:04:55.080 | I had asked lots of questions of the coin dealer.
00:04:58.200 | I started to understand a little bit about the bid and the ask, which is the way that
00:05:02.360 | gold coins are dealt with.
00:05:04.760 | And then I started to have a different appreciation for the gold coin than I had before owning
00:05:13.240 | it.
00:05:15.520 | Now I'm not going to go any farther on the gold discussion at the moment.
00:05:22.560 | I just want you to understand the lesson, which is if you can go and simply try something
00:05:27.480 | for yourself with minimal cost and minimal risk, you're probably better served to just
00:05:35.760 | go do it and try it than you are to spend hours and hours and hours researching it.
00:05:45.880 | Now I've long been a fan of the aphorism of you should take as much time researching an
00:05:51.440 | investment as it takes you to earn the money that you put into it.
00:05:54.760 | I like that.
00:05:55.760 | I don't think it's actually practical to do in all circumstances, but what I like about
00:06:02.280 | that little nugget is it gets your mind moving in the right direction.
00:06:08.320 | When you're going to make a big investment, make sure that you understand that investment
00:06:11.640 | through and through and make sure that you have exhaustively researched the potential
00:06:17.440 | benefits and potential drawbacks of that investment.
00:06:21.500 | On the other hand, if you're going to make a small investment, I would say don't spend
00:06:27.520 | all that much time.
00:06:29.400 | Just go try it.
00:06:30.880 | Just go do it.
00:06:33.220 | Now in my case, buying the gold coin was a total risk of what, a couple hundred dollars?
00:06:38.160 | What was the risk?
00:06:39.160 | Well, the risk was that I was going to have to walk back into the coin shop the next day
00:06:42.960 | and sell the gold coin back to the coin dealer.
00:06:45.700 | Maybe the gold market went down a little bit, the spot price declined in one day, and I
00:06:50.040 | had to pay the difference between the bid and the ask.
00:06:52.600 | Whatever, big deal.
00:06:54.280 | So I lose 50 bucks, big deal.
00:06:58.000 | What I actually gained from simply taking action instead of talking about it was a wealth
00:07:03.980 | of experience.
00:07:07.880 | A wealth of experience.
00:07:11.640 | Now in that case, the risk was relatively small.
00:07:15.000 | Story number two, I have just returned from a week and a half of traveling.
00:07:21.000 | And let me tell you, I'm tired of traveling.
00:07:25.240 | When I was younger, I used to think, "I just want to travel all the time.
00:07:28.400 | I want to travel.
00:07:29.400 | I want to travel."
00:07:30.880 | Well, I think I probably like traveling about as much as anybody.
00:07:35.840 | But in a whole lot of traveling over the years, I've come to view traveling in a more objective
00:07:42.280 | light.
00:07:43.640 | And I'm grateful for that because I no longer put travel at the very top of my list.
00:07:49.440 | And I think a lot of people who dream about the day when they retire just so they can
00:07:52.660 | go and travel, they have that there, not because it's something that they actually want or
00:07:57.540 | are actually pursuing, but just because it's an idea that seems nice to them, that seems
00:08:02.600 | like something they want to do.
00:08:05.560 | I vividly remember the first time I took a business trip, a traveling business trip.
00:08:10.120 | I was so excited.
00:08:11.920 | I was working for a company at the time, and I had to travel from Florida to California
00:08:16.960 | and I had to do all the big boy things.
00:08:18.720 | I had to order a car.
00:08:20.000 | I ordered a black limousine car, not a big stretch, but just I ordered a Lincoln Town
00:08:25.520 | Car Service to pick me up.
00:08:27.680 | And I flew out there by myself.
00:08:29.360 | I had a hotel room and everything, and then I flew back home.
00:08:34.240 | And I thought, "Huh, that wasn't nearly as fun as I thought it was going to be."
00:08:39.740 | But then times have gone on, and over the years I've done a whole lot of adventure travel,
00:08:44.240 | a lot of times on the cheap.
00:08:47.000 | And each time I've learned something, and a lot of times I've come back saying, "Huh,
00:08:51.240 | that really wasn't as fun as I thought it was going to be."
00:08:54.080 | Now, I still like traveling, but I've come to learn that I like certain styles of traveling,
00:08:59.880 | certain types of traveling.
00:09:02.000 | I don't know how much money I've spent over the years on travel, but all things considered,
00:09:05.720 | probably not that much.
00:09:07.880 | More recently, since I buy many plane tickets at a time instead of one, but not that much.
00:09:13.800 | What I've realized is I like a little bit of travel, but I don't like constant travel.
00:09:19.800 | That's not for me.
00:09:21.520 | And so what it means is that if I'm imagining forward in my life, and I'm trying to lay
00:09:26.620 | out what's my perfect lifestyle, I don't have to budget in years and years of travel into
00:09:32.700 | my early retirement plans.
00:09:35.780 | I can just budget in a little bit of travel here and there, and I can be content.
00:09:41.920 | And so by spending a little bit of money now, I've gained valuable experience that will
00:09:46.840 | help me to spend less money down the road.
00:09:49.440 | I've learned by experience.
00:09:51.320 | Now, I personally think there are probably different personality types.
00:09:55.880 | Some people need to learn by experience, some people don't.
00:10:00.240 | And I think I'm probably one of those, and I don't really believe what people tell me
00:10:04.200 | until I've tried it out for myself.
00:10:05.840 | I'm a person that likes to gain experiences.
00:10:10.320 | So if you have a different personality type, that's fine.
00:10:13.360 | But I would encourage you, if you're the kind of person who's sitting back and just researching,
00:10:16.840 | researching, researching, cut it off and just try it.
00:10:21.520 | Don't ask more questions about what do I do if this, what happens if, what do I do if
00:10:26.280 | that?
00:10:27.280 | Just go and do it.
00:10:28.280 | Cover your downside, protect yourself, understand a little bit of what the risks are.
00:10:32.800 | But if you can try something inexpensively, try it.
00:10:36.640 | If you've always wanted to get a job in a certain industry, just go get a job.
00:10:40.920 | If you wanted to move to another town, move.
00:10:44.120 | If you wanted to buy a certain thing or invest in a certain thing, you wanted to buy some
00:10:48.520 | gold or buy a mutual fund or buy Bitcoin, just do it.
00:10:53.320 | And you'll learn so much more by doing it than you will by reading about it.
00:11:00.680 | Spend time thinking carefully about big questions and big issues.
00:11:07.560 | But if you can try something inexpensively, do it.
00:11:12.760 | And by the way, when it comes to the big issues, a lot of times one of the best things you
00:11:17.520 | can do is still apply the same principle.
00:11:21.760 | Before you go and open a restaurant, make sure you've at least worked in a restaurant.
00:11:27.160 | Before you go and spend millions of your dollars becoming a property developer, make sure you've
00:11:31.800 | at least spent some time with somebody and volunteered for somebody who does property
00:11:35.680 | development.
00:11:37.520 | Be a doer and you'll get better data to make better decisions.
00:11:43.660 | And as your good decisions compound over time, you'll get much better results.
00:11:51.000 | Thank you for listening to today's show.
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