cornflakes
New Member
"So, I know that I'm not doing a smart thing by running around everywhere (facebook, youtube, forums, etc) telling people I have 100k to invest, but I just want to get as much information as I can to learn about investment options, and what might be best for me. I'm not thinking about my retirements savings right now. I'm actually more about how I can make this 100k work hard for me from now on. How can I be smarter with my money and make sure that it's going to work hard for me and earn money for me while I sleep..."
Cornflakes, I think you should make an appointment with a good financial planner. You need to set some financial goals — it doesn't matter what they are, just so long as they are real goals — and build a plan to help you reach them. I may be wrong — and please correct if I am — but from your posts I don't get the sense your familiar with important concepts like asset mix, risk tolerance, opportunity cost etc. You're right in that $100K isn't the kind of money to set you up for life, but it sure is a lot to lose.
Yes, that would be a wise thing for me to seek a financial planner. Do you know if consultation on the first visit is free or do they expect me to pay some fee (paid consultation?). Sometimes I'm not sure when I'm expecting too much free info from someone and maybe they are normally supposed to get paid for the time I take up?
Yes, I'm not familiar with those terms, but it may just be the words, and maybe I do know what the underlying meaning of that jargon is. Asset mix sounds like the advice people generally give which is to 'diversify' and make sure not to put all my eggs in one basket. Risk tolerance to me sounds either like how much money am I willing to risk (if say that money is lost, would I still be ok) or it means how much risk or what's the threshold of the amount of risk I'm willing to take on my investments. Opportunity cost is being aware of what I might have given up if I invested in something else (I kinda looked that one up right now, but I already thought about it, just didn't know it was called opportunity cost). Actually, that's what I'm trying to do right now. I'm trying to gather the info, put something tangible down on paper so that I can directly compare what the ROI might be. Of course, we can never really know the future, but at least by comparing how the yield would have been if I invested say last year and seeing what everything one year later yielded (stocks, bonds, real estate, etc).
Just by reading many of your posts, I get exposed to some much needed information and 'vocabulary' of the things I'm looking into. I need to familiarize myself with the jargon or vocabulary of these sort of things.