Finding diamonds
It's been a great day, all weekends are. I've spent most of it working though; Firstly with a client-meeting to sign contracts with a new client and then at home scanning and distributing documents to the appropriate operators within my office by email. It hasn't been too difficult of course, but I've missed out on a pretty nice weather day.
The best part of my day was talking to the client over coffee; Not just because she signed my contracts but because she was an absolute pleasure to speak with. Very easy on the eye too.
She's twenty two and has just purchased a $385,000 property as an investment and initially, in our meeting last week, I had thought she'd received assistance from mum and dad, as many do. I found out different and it surprised the hell out of me.
We met for 90 minutes and I found her to be a switched on, results-oriented, driven girl with goals, a plan to reach them the ownership and responsibility to ensure it happens; Legit.
It was very impressive. Of course she doesn't know it all which is where I come in, and the company I work for, however what I saw in her was in stark contrast to the average twenty two year-old these days, in my experience at least, and I found myself feeling very impressed and quite respectful of this client.
Later, while processing the contract, my mind wandered to my own youth which I feel ended at the age of seventeen and a half when I moved out of home and in with my girlfriend Faith, (now wife). She was sixteen at the time and was twenty two when we got married, on the actual wedding day as it turns out. I thought about our own investment journey.
We were both brought up with a keen sense of the value of money as our respective parents didn't have a lot of it, and because we were out of home so early, we'd had to grow up quickly.
We made mistakes of course, but found success too, and along the way learned the value of ownership and responsibility. We worked hard, went without things, set goals and reached them, and missed them too of course; And now later in life see the benefits of that effort and the lessons we learned along the way.
Today I learned something too...That there are young people out there thinking about, and taking actions for, their financial future. That there's people, probably only a few, putting financial-matters before fake spray tans, eye lashes, phone purchases or whatever instant gratification is the trend at any given point.
Sure, going without stuff, to secure other stuff, is not very sexy these days and it seems having everything now is...But in reality every action has a result of some kind...Investing does...As does consumerism and credit-spending on value-depreciable items. A person just needs to decide which result is more important to them.
My job revolves around investment and investors and I can say, in the seventeen years I have been doing it, finding diamonds, shining examples like this young lady, is rare...But always enjoyable. It sort of perked me up a little for some reason. We are a childless couple, but I reckon that if we were able to have children they would have been like this girl, and we would be very proud of them.
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised.
Be well.
