Defensive or Offensive?

I thought that financial planning can be explained a little differently.

Consider the work that I do. I help clients review their finances, adjust spending, set up insurance programs, build investment portfolios, bring dividends, bring interest rates, monitor performances, etc. These help preserve and grow money that my clients have.

I explained the above to a couple of my important clients, and asked them what they thought. Generally, they felt it was good to have such work in place. I later told them, that I coined such work as defensive financial planning.

So when there is a defensive, there has to be an opposite called offensive. Now what's offensive then?

What if I told you that an aggressive investment portfolio is not considered offensive? What if I told you that cutting down expenses by 50% is not considered offensive? What then is offensive?

I explained further that offensive means that you work on building your income, not your investment portfolios.

Here's why I said that.

All these years I discovered that clients want and have an ideal lifestyle ahead of them. However, they usually dismiss these ideals because it's just "not realistic" due to the expenses that they already have in their lives. They say these commitments cannot be reduced, despite how they try.

Fine. I mean, why reduce it? Why not earn more?

With recessions like what we are facing, opportunities abound everywhere. The majority of the herd will be hiding, not daring to make potentially rewarding moves in their career, or strike out on business opportunities in the weekends. If you observed the streets on Valentine's Day yesterday, you would have guessed that those nice looking gentlemen selling bouquets of flowers made very handsome profits (why didn't I do that myself???!!!).

Offensive financial planning is critical, because how you save, how you spend, how you build your insurance, how you build your investments, all depend on how much you earn!

You can increase your income by weekend business opportunities, trade some commodities, provide a service to a niche market in your evenings, work hard and smart in your existing career with a definite direction and plan of growth, whatever it may be.

You don't have to desperately put on whatever armour you can find now and go to war. Begin by first visiting the library and get your hands on good books. If you'd like personal recommendations, you may drop me an email, and I'll gladly give you my choice titles. Whatever you do, your new journey of success only begins on the day you take your first step. Else, you'll probably find yourself in the same place when it's 5 years later from now.

All the best.