Financial Advice to Young People

   Okay, so continuing on the topic of financial literacy, I would like to emphasize again the importance of self learning. Believe it or not, when I asked my millionaire friend who the heck is his financial adviser to have made the amount money he had, he said, “I have the best adviser- the INTERNET.” At first I thought he’s got to be kidding me! But later, I found a video in ANC channel about youth investors and the investor being interviewed at that time said that the internet is indeed a minefield of information for young investors! So I did not waste any time. Since I’ve learned from my millionaire friend that I must start first with educating myself financially talking, I downloaded as many ebooks from the internet as I could. The topics are ranging from investing to personal finance to accounting. So now, I have a pretty amount of materials lined up to be read. If you want to look for free ebooks just as I did, you just need to be a little creative in how you search in the internet to get reliable sources of reading materials. When I scanned the ebooks I’ve downloaded, honestly, I got a bit overwhelmed. I did not know where to start. So instead of reading, I’ve watch videos first about financial advice to young people and I came across a video where Warren Buffet was a guest speaker to a forum of students. By the way, I only came to know about Warren Buffet, considered to be the most successful investor of the 20th century from that video. Obviously, he did not exist in my vocabulary before but ask any investor and he/she might actually know even Buffett’s current net worth. Same thing applies to you, if I ask you who is considered the father of health engineering in the Philippines, of course you don’t know. But ask me and I’ll tell you the guy’s name and even his mannerism when he talks. That is because I came from the engineering discipline and that person was my teacher for a couple of subjects in the University of the Philippines. (By the way, if you are curious, the answer is Dr. Wilfredo Jose.) So the vocabulary of a person tells you pretty much about what he/she knows and what world he/she is into. That’s why I only came to know about Warren Buffet when I got introduced into the world of investments.

   So going back to Buffet’s advice to young people, he also emphasized the importance of self-teaching and learning from other people. But the one thing that struck me the most is his line, “Discover the full potential of the talents you have. This is the only asset you have that can’t be taxed and can’t be taken away from you.” 

He also enumerated 5 elements of a wealth-growing mind:

1. Do not be afraid of making mistakes.

2. Know the power of compounding.

3. Learn how to move your money.

4. Educate yourself.

5. Learn to wisely allocate your resources.