Are Your Beliefs Holding You Back? 4 Myths Busted

In my daily conversations with people about money, there are some common themes that come up.

These themes are either a belief, a fear or a norm that they have come to believe because that is what they have always heard or been taught about money.

I suspect you might hold some of these beliefs as well. And that’s ok, absolutely nothing wrong with that…

But what I am going to attempt to do, is show you how we can shift these beliefs or fears, and change your money outcomes moving forward as a result. Sound interesting?

Since our education system doesn’t provide kids with basic money skills, we tend to grow up learning about money from our parents or friends, who learned from their parents or friends, and so on. That’s all well and good if these people are good with money and investing, but if they aren’t, well you know what happens.

So let’s squash some of these beliefs and fears so you can have better money outcomes, no matter where you are in your money journey.

#1: I don’t have enough money to invest

This is probably my favourite belief to overcome because it is probably the most common reason given for not taking an active role in growing wealth.

I like to refer to the great man himself when resolving this one, Mr. Warren Buffett. If you don’t know who he is, look him up, but to save you the time, he is on the top 5 of most world’s richest person lists…

…And he did it all from investing!

Now before you say, easy for him he probably had (insert whatever you like) that helped him. Well, the simple truth is he literally started with nothing. He taught himself about stock markets and believed he knew how to make money from buying good stocks, so he convinced a few friends to contribute some money for him to start, on the promise that he would make them money.

He started in 1956 with $100 and thirteen years later cashed out of the little venture he started with friends with $25 million. Twenty-two years later he had accumulated over $8 billion in net worth.

So when people suggest they don’t have enough money to invest, it is worth remembering that Warren Buffett started with just $100. Do you think you could scramble up $100 to get your dreams started?

#2: I need a large sum to get started or to make it worthwhile

This is similar to the previous belief, but with a slight twist. You see, this belief comes from a deeper problem that is permeating throughout society at a rapid rate.

I call it the Instant Gratification gene.

When most people say to me that they believe you need a large sum of money to get into investing, what it turns out they are really saying is, you need a large sum to make large returns, and I don’t want to waste time making small returns.

So to help overcome this belief or excuse, I like to use a simple maths game.

Let’s say you have $1 and you can double it every year. Now I totally appreciate that achieving double returns every year is not possible, but it is the maths of this example that are the key.

That string of numbers looks a little like this…

1, 2, 4, 8, 16,….512, 1024…………..32,768, 65,536, 131,072, 262,144, 524,288, 1,048,576.

After 10 years of doubling your money, you have just $1,024, after 15 years suddenly it is $32,768 and then 20 years it’s a massive $1,048,576.

The point of this exercise is to demonstrate the power of compounding, the eighth wonder of the world. It takes a while to build up the momentum, but once it gets working for you, it has a massive impact.

So every year that you delay getting started, it’s not costing you $1 like in this example, it’s actually costing $524,288 in 20 years’ time.

That is, delaying because you believe you need a large sum of money is actually preventing you from accumulating that large sum of money. You can’t make the big money unless you start with the small money.

Now if you are fortunate enough to have a large starting balance, have some fun playing with the example and see what it means for you, the numbers get scary big pretty quickly!!!!

#3 I have too much debt

Of all the beliefs and fears I hear, this is the one that hurts the most. Debt is spiralling out of control in this country and the low interest rate environment is covering over the debt storm that could brew if things change.

However, having debt doesn’t need to prevent your progress when it comes to investing. It just requires some planning.

We use a money planner to help people understand where their money is going. The first step is to be in surplus after all your costs, including debt.

Once you have that sorted, there is money, however large or small an amount, that can be used to not only reduce your debt efficiently but also allocate to growing your wealth.

It’s the best of both worlds. And it reinforces the example above with the $1. Starting now is more important than the amount you start with.

#4 I don’t have the knowledge to do it myself

This one frustrates me, a little. I know, it’s not your fault. As mentioned above, we are not taught this stuff at school, and that is what frustrates me.

But the fact that we aren’t taught this doesn’t mean we can’t take steps to learn ourselves, right?

Tony Robbins released a book in 2017 called Unshakeable, The Financial Freedom Playbook. In it, he spends the first 92 pages explaining why you should take control of your money yourself.

He does a masterful job of demonstrating the cost of handling your financial future over to advisors.

The extension of this belief, that you don’t have the knowledge, is that you have to pay advisors to do it for you. That is of course, if you want to grow your wealth and secure your financial future.

And who doesn’t want that?

So if paying advisors is a costly exercise, that means you need to do it yourself. To do that you need to get yourself educated on how to manage your money and invest for a secure financial future.

There are many resources to help you. Start with Tony’s book and go from there.

It’s my mission to teach 1.000,000 people to take control of their money and change the money outcomes that are crippling people’s your for life.

Jump on the bandwagon, it’s never too late.

Andrew Woodward is a mindshift.money accredited money coach based in Sydney who teaches people to take control of their money and invest for their future, simply and efficiently. Take the Money Health Score quiz at https://start.theinvestorsway.com.au/money-quiz