What you can learn from working in Financial Services
When I was younger I always had an interest in money, especially making it and not spending it.
I was at my most happiest when I had a tin full of cash and some money in savings. As I got older that discipline and interest in money started to wain, I got slightly cock sure of myself and made some pretty shitty financial decisions.
Recently, I’ve been working within the financial services sector. I entered the industry with a bit of scepticism, after all what could I possibly learn from being within the financial sector?
The answer was a hell of a lot.
Financial Resilience
Just as a person can be resilient to advertsity so to should your finances.
Financial resilience is defined as the ability to take a negative hit and recover quickly.
Such examples of financial resilience includes:
- Savings
- A Good paying job
- Low debts or none at all
- Living within your means
- Multiple streams of income
Essential it is putting in the ground work to ensure that if you do have a financial crisis for instance you become unwell, your relationship breaks down or worse you lose a loved one.
Think about it, just for a moment, how many couples have a joint account. How many partners are reliant on one singular income? How many families are reliant on that income?
It is a recipe and a disaster waiting to happen.
You can recover quickly financially and move forward.
Eventually money runs out
At the latter end of 2021 I attended a business event where one of the major topics was income protection. Income protection is often used when we fall on hard times, become ill or for some other reason we lose our primary source of income.
Income protection is a luxury product within the financial services market and is quite expensive to have. However for those of us that have it, it is designed to click in when we have a catastrophic event like illness.
One of the questions at the event was, how long could you survive without income. It got me thinking, actually not very long. The fact is in life you’re going to need an income.
Whether your income comes from dividends, assets, salary or a side hustle you are going to need an income.
Without an income to replenish your expenditure, each of us with different lifestyles, the money will run out.
There is no shortage of money
The final area that I am learning is that there is no shortage of money in this world. Just like numbers in mathematics the figures are constantly increasing.
Just this year Apple, the computer manufacturer, has become the first company to be valued at $3tn, making it the wealthiest company in the world.
Now lets think about that for a moment, when the company was started it didn’t have a valuation of that and it has been through persistent and continuous development both of its products, infrastructure and its staff that have all aided it to become the company we all know and love today.
Customers and avid fans of Apple have continuously bought their products time and time again.
When I hear that people are struggling, I ask myself what are they doing to help themselves get out of the financial problem they are in. Have they violated one of the rules of good financial planning.
I’ve made some pretty horrendous financial decisions over my 30 odd years and working within the financial services sector is teaching me a hell of a lot as to how money works.
