Career Choices

OK, I confess... I have been procrastinating and not been posting. Just changed jobs and trying to settle into it. Thats just for the past couple of months and before that? I was just plain lazy!

Something popped into my mind last month. For all recently graduates looking to move into the corporate world, my career advice is to find some time to try out at least 2 of the following 3 jobs

1. Stock broking
2. Property sales
3. Insurance sales

Why do I choose these 3 jobs/careers? The reasons that I put forth are as follows:

1. Besides working for money, we should let our money work for us as well. The first 2 allows your money to work for you while the 3rd protects your money.
2. Share and property investing are 2 of the best ways to grow your money and it is my experience that some personal experience is the best when dealing with the world of finance and real estate. Never leave your money solely in the hands of the so called "professionals" as no one will take as much care as investing your money as yours truly!
3. If you leave the above 3 jobs to 3rd parties, remember how they are being compensated, via commissions. Therefore there is a skewed alignment of interests as most products/services have upfront fees/commissions and is not based on performance. So in the above cases, your interest is to make more money from these investments, which probably take time. And the agents of the products and services are interested in how much is the value of your transaction, simply because their compensation is based upon that.

However, I am not saying that all such agents are money sucking folks, it is just that they are in a job whereby the compensation is structured this way. So by simply putting yourself in their shoes, you accomplish 2 things:

1. You find that you have no choice but to sell based on volume of transactions, thats how you are compensated and you should not fault them for their actions (unless they defraud you).
2. You learn how to "DIY", you learn what to look out for... how to value companies so that you can work out how much you are willing to pay for their share price, what to look out or when buying a property, which company offers the best insurance plan etc.

I give this piece of advice based on my experience as I have tried insurance sales, have not really gone into stock broking but my previous job gave me exposure to equity investing which also sparked my interest in value investing (Warren Buffett's investing philosophy). I am starting to dabble a little bit into property investment. And I do hope that this is enough to get a head start into getting a tidy nest egg when I retire.... I am still constantly reading and learning to sharpen my skills.

Without such financial instruments and a little appetite for risk, how can we hope to make enough money to retire comfortably?

Am waiting for client to revert so that I can get my things done and go home!