Behavioral InvestmentInvestment Philosphy

Will Power: Takes you ahead of Time

We humans have a tendency to blame others for everything that goes wrong with us. If something unfortunate happen which we did not wish to; we blame bad luck, God, parents, other person, environment etc. etc. We have a big list of all these excuses. We don’t take these things as a corrective step for next time. I have seen many people who behave in this very fashion in regards to money too…..they don’t have wealth and they blame their employer, parents, college, degree, friends etc for it. But they never agree that its their fault that they never saved. You don’t need big salary to become wealthy. Its Will Power which you need to become wealthy.

Why I say we need will power to be wealthy??

Because I have seen many people who know & admit the fact that they can become wealthy if they invest their money in equity and for that they have to save more. But these people keep delaying all the activity related to creating wealth. They will have 1000’s of excuses for not opening an account, or submitting documents, or investing their money, or reading something related to investing etc.

On the other side I have seen few people who are so eager to create wealth that they start investing straight away. A thumbs up to them from my side (y)

Initially I used to push people to start investing and telling them benefits of it in the long term. But then I realized they will not do this by my voice trying to influence them, they will do this if it comes from their inner self. After that they will just need a defined direction. But if they don’t want to do it altogether then no one in the world can force them. In my view its the will power which is a MUST kind of factor in the path of wealth creation.

Can you please name that one person who accumulated wealth by harnessing his will power??

Warren Buffett has total wealth of 66.7B USD. He surely conducts his due diligence while investing and he always tries to go that extra mile.
The stock market isa device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.

You can learn the skills like timing the market, selling at the right time, analyzing the fundamentals etc. But it’s really tough to harness the skills of will power. You must understand the mechanisms of your willpower and boost your investing success.

Learn more about self-regulation and discover ways to enhance it to your advantage and grow your investments:
1.) Action:
We human have an inherent tendency of delaying the things by making stupid excuses whether its important or not. We come up with 100’s of reasons for not taking an action. Their might be a case when you need to add nominee to your account, transferring money to demat account, opening account, submitting docs etc. But we are delaying these simple task by not taking appropriate action. We need to understand that by taking action we move forward in that direction and new doors open there. If you stay at one place then you will keep getting what you have already got. Not taking action is the biggest sin now a days as every one is moving so fast that you can’t afford to do this mistake.

Actions come with decision; you will automatically start moving in flow if you determine that I have to take action. I can bet that you will realize what small things you were delaying which were taking hardly much time. You were just ignoring it and trying to figure out new excuse for not doing it everyday. Just get up and do it; don’t waste your precious time in just thinking so much.

action is must for results.

2.) Reduce Temptation: If you observe your money spending behavior, you will find that every month at least 5-10% of your salary is wasted on the things which were not necessary for you. You just spent money on them because you got tempted. Like your those shoes which you bought last month but you wore them only a couple of times because you bought them by getting tempted at that time but now you don’t like them. Similarly there must be many things which you don’t need but you have it. If you would have invested that money in equity instead of wasting  while purchasing unnecessary items, then surely it will be increasing your wealth. But we fear with the equity that it might eat up our investment but we are ready to waste this money on worthless things which we will never use.

By reducing temptation you directly increase your savings; always think from the long term perspective then your short term action will also be in line with the long term vision.

Increase temptation for your long term vision.

3.) Save Mindlessly: It’s best to make saving the default option by setting up an automatic transfer to your saving or investment account. Don’t rely on good intentions, because conscious efforts to periodically move money from checking to savings take willpower, and sooner or later they may fail. Automatic transfers or deposits don’t hinge on manual effort.

After moving good amount to savings account you can create a habit of moving this money to investment account. So, it keeps accumulating and creating wealth; which is must for stable and financially free life. As I have seen many people who are saving good amount but they are not investing and when they get tempted with something or some circumstances come they withdraw the money from saving account and take leverage of it. Therefore, its better to move this money to investment account and treat it as your home as usually people sell home in the last if they don’t have any other option.

Warren Buffett

4.) Use Disciplined Investing: Developing this habit is tough but if once you have found the way then you feel crazy about it. Lately, one of my friends started investing in mutual funds but somehow her SIP application got rejected due to a miss match in her signature. For the last 2 months she has been waiting for her signature to get corrected from the bank side instead of heading towards the NEFT transfer process suggested by me, as in view of her that is the simpler method to go for.

Therefore developing disciplined investing is little tough because you face many situations which will force you to delay your investment. But if you are determined that I would invest this much amount every month and transfer the same into investment accounts as soon as the salary comes; then you will definitely adjust your expenditures with the money residue. It’s a human behavior to spend more and save less. We believe in living today and destroying future.

Mahatma Gandhi
Always keep your will power as a best friend with you & treat your excuses as enemy. Try to keep moving forward. Read something daily so you keep learning daily.

Vikas Agarwal
the authorVikas Agarwal
Vikas Agarwal is an IIT-Varanasi graduate in Chemical Engineering. He is the Founder and CEO of Finaacle.com - an investment advisory website. He is a Business Development Professional but a Value Investor at heart. He writes articles on Finaacle, which focus on simplifying the art of investing and the causes of human misjudgment when it comes to investing. He also shares his experiences as an investor and lessons from some of the greatest investors of all time.

4 Comments

Join The Discussion

%d bloggers like this: