Quote Originally Posted by BIRMANBOY View Post
The reality as you have stated below is not THE reality it is simply YOUR or A reality. Like any endeavour in life different people are in different circumstances and have differing levels of capacity. I find its better to encourage people rather than discourage them so that they will not just give up because "someone with heaps of experience" makes them feel like its just all too hard and they are wasting their time. The best teachers and coaches are the ones that support everyone and not just the top 20%. This forum should be one for an exchange of opinions and ideas, but also supportive and encouraging to newbs and those less experienced. Stating that things should be done this way or that way, or shouldn't be done is not recognising individual differences.
Teachers and coaches in the field of finance? Let's be real, investing is far from the examples we see in sporting, school education, your boss, etc. There is simply no field that is more biased and skewed than the field of investments in finance. They don't teach much of this subject in schools, no different to the subject of economics, for the simply reason? To the layman they're all very boring subjects.

IMO and to many in this forum, it's not boring. But what i'm not appreciative is the lack of transparency in the field of investment. For eg. you have a whole investment scheme backed by the NZ gov't in the area called Kiwi Saver. While looking over at the asset class of owning residential houses as an investment class, the NZ gov't doesn't want to touch that with a 10m pole. Investments and Finance is a complex field but it doesn't have to be. Gurus like Warren Buffet have time and time again made the same statement that individuals don't need to believe in the hoo haa that investment advisors and various gov't regulatories spell out. All you have to do is stay invested and look at the long term ; or basically, "Forget about the investment and let American businesses do their charm".

But this is not what we have in NZ. Individuals can't simply put their $ into share investments so easily or the NZ gov't has restrictions such as the FMA on where you can invest or can't. These 'distortions' to the investment field make it very hard to any new person to understand and so by making things complicated, new investors feel they need "professional advice", yet getting that kind of advice costs dearly to the person investing with them or with their managed fund.

I can understand justakiwi being offended with my statements. I can also assure justakiwi that meeting with any financial advisor, they will be quick to show you what you can do with the savings but in the back of their mind, they're rubbing their hands collecting the commissions and mgt/admin fees. They certainly won't talk a lot about buying a house using leverage and make the comparison with buying so and so Kiwi Saver Funds and the tax advantages of owning your own home. By all means, my comments were never to offend or push down the new person wanting to learn. But in this day of age where gov'ts regulate things and distort tax laws in different asset classes, the best thing a person wanting to learn is to know the hard facts. Sometimes these hard facts are too rude to handle. I can assure you they're not BS because the examples you can see with those that leveraged and bought multiple houses over the past 30 or so years have done far better than those who invested in NZ equities over the same period. Nothing BS about this.