Caution is of course good, but I have spent so much of my life being cautious, that I had failed to build anything of value for the future.
we are loss averse in the moment and take the "everything will be okay" in the future approach, without considering what it takes for everything to actually be okay.
This one is a hard wake up call, because being cautious seems to always pay off. It does for a very long time and I have always been even proud of my caution. It took a pandemic, a crumbling economy, huge uncertainty, and indeed having cautiously generated some savings over the years to realize that savings are not safe. That I sit on fake money and don't really know on what to hold.
It is an interesting mental conflict, as people treat investing cautiously as it comes with risk, with spending as the cautious move, as it is the better to have the bird in the hand, than two in the bush. the problem is of course, that the risk aversion of investing long, means risk exposure in the future if there are no future assets held.
Starting on investing is a difficult thing, a mental conflict as you put it. To wonder how not to loose now on an ill bet, yet your loss if guaranteed if you do nothing. I struggle of finding information, fighting against the scams, the stock market scam, the crypto scam, the fiat money scam. The more I see, the more they all sum up into numbers on my screen.
One of the things that people have to remember is that no company cares about our well-being, unless it drives their profits.
Maybe I'm too pessimistic, yet even that feels utopic. It would be a great trade to drive a company's profit in exchange of my well-being. Yet the trades are on the illusion of well-being. The insurance is a paper trade for "peace of mind", the holidays are a escape, the loans for homes, where the buyer takes all the risk for a home that does not always act as an asset, keep making life more expensive.
It is a challenge at the moment, as there are bubbles everywhere and what might not be a bubble (crypto) is far from certain whether it will survive. However, I think that with increasing risk in traditional areas, crypto is getting more certain of success as people look to diversify, even into the "crazy"
I think the only way forward is to invest into ownership. Yes, real estate and the like qualifies, but I think people should start small - discover if they own their account on social media first and if not, find a place they can. two billion Facebook users do that, the world changes dramatically as 2 billion people start to learn.
You should be pessimistic, as this is definitely not the norm. We have set up a world where the good should act for free, while the harmful can act for profit. The big earners in the world should never be those who cause us, or our conditions harm - especially once identified and there are other options.
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