Read, read and read

Read, read and read

Remember the SYL (Sweet Young Lady, sorry not SYT or Sweet Young Thing because she is really a sweet young lady) who regularly posts motivation and meaningful notes on her Facebook?

Yours truly continues to be her ardent reader/fan/supporter (you name it) ever since I got to know her. Some of her meaningful notes even touched  my spouse so much that this SYL was in her thoughts from time to time.

My spouse showed her appreciation by presenting her a personally home-made Durian moon cake recently. (One of the toughest tasks in preparing moon cake is the stirring of the paste where one stands in front of the burning gas stove for long period of time). I should know because I was ordered by my spouse to carry out that stirring duty).

I am happy to share with you that it has been a great wonderful year for this SYL. She fulfilled her dream of visiting South Korea early this year (luckily before the depreciating ringgit against the US dollar).

SYL has been in love for a long time since her early days with .... almost everything about what South Korea has to offer. SYL loves their series drama, music, food, places and SYL can even speak a bit of Korean!

SYL recently upgraded herself with a new sporty car. I called the car Pinky because it was in beautiful shinny pink colour and the car really matches her as both were rather small size. In Bahasa Malaysia, we call it "secocok".

Indeed SYL is a wonderful friend to have and yours truly has the privilege to be in her lists! There is one more thing .... SYL is also is my gadget Shifu. I learnt a great deal from her on how to use the various apps and this has helped me a lot. Ironically, both of us happened to be using the same model hand phone and both of us incidentally bought it one week apart.

While I called her my Gadget Shifu, she sees me as her Financial Shifu which I am a bit flattered. SYL is now keen to learn about the Financial issues and I am glad that I am able to share my knowledge and experience  with her.

For her young age, SYL is actually matured in her thoughts as I found out.

Many gen-y at her age would most probably be enjoying life to the fullest without much a care of what is going to happen tomorrow, but not SYL. She is concerned about the future with the constant rising cost of living and inflation.

SYL hopes to learn about Financial issues which can help her to be in a good financial position. I termed it as Financial Freedom. (Anyway, Financial Freedom is another issue, perhaps I like to share with my readers in the future).

I wish her a very successful financial future in the years ahead.

Recently I came across one of her posting sharing about the secret why only a few per cent of people are more successful than the majority. And the secret is so simple : read, read and read.

Research has shown that the majority of people do not read. Why? Are they too busy that the time for reading is not there? Or they do not know how to read? Or they find reading a waste of time? Or they do know where to search for related reading materials/information? Or reading is not the trend anymore?

I think the reasons/excuses for not reading could be endless if I were to go on asking many people.

According to the "secret", people who spend some time reading certain subject tend to be more knowledgeable about that subject

Now back here, my question is : Do you read? If you read, what do you read? What interests you to read? If that particular subject is of no interest to you, you are unlikely to read. So this brings us to the subject of interest to us. You might read something of a particular subject you are interested in.

For example if a person is interested in plant, chances are he will search high and low for reading materials/ideas on that. And if he consistently  reads again and again over a period of time, this person is likely to know a lot about plant. What he knows is known as expertise/valuable knowledge which will be only useful for him if he applies it into action!

This reminder to read also reaffirmed my belief that one should read a lot if one is interested about a particular subject. I recalled those days when internet access was very limited to the public and searching for reading materials/ideas about investing/companies' profiles/investment strategies  was very difficult.

I read A LOT about all these whenever possible. I also spent a great deal of time reading those investment magazines, The Edge, Personal Money, Smart Investors, Focus Malaysia and many annual reports.

I am not "malu" to say that those days when I went to the toilet for my usual morning business, I would carry a few annual report with me. It was during "those moment" when my attention was about what was written about the  annual report rather than what I was ACTUALLY doing.

My annual report books were filling up my big cupboard apart from all those stocks magazines and The Edge. My wife was constantly reminding me I should do something about this before my whole reading room becomes a giant library!

Thanks to the internet, I do not keep many hardcopy annual reports anymore. I still did keep some, but maybe due to the beautiful pictures and unique designs of the annual reports copies.

The so many years of reading has actually helped me to understand the financial positions of companies although I must again admit that there are many financial reports with a lot of figures that I cannot understand fully.

Nevertheless it has been a great help for me when it comes to investing as I stand a better chance of knowing the financial health of a particular company rather then simply investing into it without a slightest knowledge of it.

So for those who not want or wish to read before jumping into a stocks, you are most probably taking a risk only you will be responsible.

Then again, it is your money and you are your own king.