Who do you look to for good financial advice? Whose money advice do you trust? Who is the best financial advisor you know? It is possible that the best money advice you can get is from that person in the mirror?
Your Best Money Advisor
Reflection can be a good thing. Especially when it comes to money issues. Unfortunately many people simply avoid every serious thought about money because they find it uncomfortable.
One important area to think over concerns the source of our thinking about money. Examining an idea we hold about money in the light of its source can often make it possible to develop a different viewpoint that can result in major changes for the better.
Most people simply soak up what they know from their family, from their friends and from what they hear in the media. Much if not most of this kind of thinking is distorted if not completely false.
The Source of Your Financial Beliefs
Take time to think about your own financial education.
- Did you learn much from your parents about money?
- Do most of your concepts come from friends and other acquaintances?
- Have you casually listen to the messages in TV and radio ads about money (home loans, using credit cards, etc) without any real critical thinking.
- Have you read any good books about money?
As you think about these things, there are two suggestions I would encourage you to consider. First, become more conscious of your habitual attitudes toward money and the source of your money ideas. Second, make a conscious effort to become more critical (in the scientific sense of carefully examining) in your thinking about money.
Choosing the Best Financial Advisers
Consider whether your financial ideas come from people who are successful with their own money or people who aren’t.
Do suggested options come from someone who is looking out for your interests or from someone looking to make a profit by getting you to accept their suggestions?
Why is all this so important? Isn’t it even a somewhat cynical viewpoint? Actually, it is simply a reasonable and obvious approach in view of the reality of life when you are looking for good financial advice.
Most people are making poor financial decisions. A few are making excellent ones. If we want to be successful with money it is essential for us to learn to discern the difference between destructive and constructive financial advice and choose to think in ways that will truly improve, not harm, our personal success.
So the answer to who we trust turns out to be, “No one!” We listen more to people who prove by results that they know more than others and we trust ourselves more than others because we know we are genuinely acting in our own interest.
But we must question everyone, even ourselves, about the wisdom of every financial decision. Employ a lot of skepticism about every financial option. Think through all the unintended consequences of any particular choice. In other words, think through your money decisions before, not after, making them.
Get the Best Financial Advice
To summarize, we want to be our own best financial advisor, but we recognize that because we have all absorbed a lot of poor thinking along the way we need to examine even our own thinking and use our mental capacity to reason in order to make our financial advice to ourselves the best—if we want to be successful.
