Road to Wealth : Review-Update Financial Investments & Enjoy your Investment

We have written about the long road to wealth in the previous three issues and we now come to the final part of this article. Previously, we dealt with seven topics :

1. Regular health check up.

2. Start your saving today.

3. Look after your property.

4. Take out a life insurance.

5. Think about retirement.

6. Make a Will.

7. Tax Planning.

We now discuss two final steps:

8. Review and Update your Financial Investments

In the old days, Thai families stay together under one roof and it is common that there are three generations who are 1) grandparents, 2) father and mother, and 3) children. Nowadays, they are more independent. Many children who graduated from college will move out either by renting or buying a condominium and live on their own. In addition, divorces among Thai become more common. Therefore, you should review and update all your investments taking into consideration the changing circumstances:

1. When the marital status change either you get married to your love one or have a separation or divorce from your spouse, you should check your marriage certificate, divorce papers and birth certificates of all your kids. Make sure that your life and personal accident insurance policies are valid with enough coverage for yourself and family including the naming of beneficiaries therein because those beneficiaries may change due to your divorce or that some of them may grow up and are able to stay on their own. Then younger ones should make a bigger share of your estate.

2. Investment instruments including land title deeds, share certificates, certificates of investment in mutual fund, etc. should be properly kept, accounted for and identified. If you rent a safe deposit box from a bank, make sure you have the key or the combination. Last but not least, review the value of your portfolio regularly because it may go up or down depending on the economic condition, interest rate, exchange rate as well as type of investment instruments. During a period with high interest, debentures and bonds would be attractive due to relatively higher return. However, during an economic boom, value of stock and real estate are likely to go up much faster. If there is a crisis either natural or man made, gold is the most attractive investment.

3. Update your will. As discussed above your marital status could change or that you have more children, then make sure that the will is updated. Especially if your wit itemizes all the assets stating which pieces go to whom, every time you acquire or dispose of assets or there is a change in the heirs, then you need to revise your will accordingly.

9. Enjoy your Investment.

Experts advises that among the various type of investment either real estate, bonds, stock and gold or foreign investment, you should decide which category that you prefer to invest because some people like gold so they focus on this precious metal. Some are intelligent stock investor, so they put more weight on equity. Many people prefer real estate either land, houses or condominium. Therefore you should invest in something that you really enjoy.

If you are not a smart investor because you are a sales person and would like to do marketing or an engineer would like to work on mechanical design, then you have to outsource by either hiring a financial planner or invest in mutual fund.

Finally, you invest in something that you enjoy. Recently, many Thai shifted their portfolio into shares of modern trade because they are market leader and whether or not there is any crisis or economic boom, people still shop at modern trade as a new trend in lifestyle.

In conclusion, there are nine steps altogether that will lead you to wealth. However, I need to remind you that this is a long and winding road that you should start pursuing today. Do not wait. On the average, it could take 20 years to reach the target. Good luck to you all.