Focus on the long term

The strong performance of both our property markets and our share market showed us to ignore the numerous pessimistic property predictions by the so called “experts” – don’t make 30-year investment decisions based on the last 30 minutes of news.

Successful investors don’t just buy investments that are working now – they invest in the type of assets that have always worked.

Clearly this was the thinking behind Warren Buffet’s quote “Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy with others are fearful.”

Listen to the media’s but – not to educate yourself

Remember… it’s media’s job to get eyeballs on the advertisers’ content, rather than to educate you.

However, when the pandemic first hit, many of us watched the 6 o’clock news, and then the 7 o’clock news to see if there was something different reported and then maybe the 7:30 report to get another angle on what was going to happen to our health, our economy and our property markets.

Think about it… how many of those expert’s forecasts came true?

But look how many people worried and stressed about the potential outcomes that just didn’t occur.

Taking the media seriously simply leads people to live in a state of fear and anxiety and causes some to make disastrous investment errors.

Then there’s the Doomsayers

There will always be someone out there telling you not to invest in property.

In 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, the doomsayers found their moment and told us how our property markets would crash – they were wrong of course.

Now they’re out once again telling us that inflation, rising interest rates and mortgage defaults are going to create the property market to crash.

Don’t listen to these Property Pessimistic and Negative Nellies – the so called “experts looking for a headline”

Don’t try and time the market

Even though they are armed with all the research available in today’s information age, economists never seem to agree where our property markets are heading and usually get their forecasts wrong.

Rather than timing your investment purchases (or sales), if you buy the right investment-grade assets, time in the market is much more important than timing the market.

We believe – Time in the market and not timing the market is key.

Property Investment is a numbers game

While low interest rates and easy access to loans drove our property markets over much of 2021, the rules of the game are changing with APRA once again interfering to slow down our housing markets.

Moving forward it is likely that APRA will bring in further tightening measures.

This means now is a great time to speak with an investment savvy mortgage broker to ensure you have the right finance in place for your existing property loans.

We believe – Don’t invest with your heart but invest based on the numbers.

 Invest for Capital Growth

Capital growth should be the key driver for your investment decisions, rather than cash flow.

Cash flow is important and will keep you in the game, but it’s capital growth that gets you out of the rat race.

If you can only afford to own 2 or 3 properties, make sure they are all “investment grade” properties that are working hard for you.

We believe – So smart investors first build their equity and then they convert it to cash flow.

There will always be reasons not to invest

Every year brings its own set of ups and down’s and lots of reasons not to invest.

You can go back as far in history as you like and there won’t be a crisis free year.

Investors need to focus on their long-term goals, they see these crises as once in a generation event that will alter the course of history, when in reality they are just the normal path of history.

We believe – investing for the long term and blocking out the noise is critical.

 There are always risks associated with investing

Don’t be afraid of failing, because the biggest risk is not doing anything to protect your financial future.

Sometimes negative experiences, mistakes and failures can be even better than a success because they teach you something new which another win could never teach you.

However, we are often so driven to get things right that we fail to see the value in the things we get wrong.

Instead, we spend our time wishing we had done it differently.

Or not doing anything at all because the fear of making mistakes paralyses us. If you get it wrong, learn from your mistake and make it count by doing it differently next time.

One “failure” can – with time – help you create many successes.

We believe – In life you will never get everything right. We will make mistakes but at least we have taken action and as we know action leads to results.

Time is a limited resource – don’t waste it

We all have 1,440 minutes every day, but some of us squander it, waste it or don’t use it efficiently.

The lockdowns of the last 2 years reminded me how truly valuable time is.

You can lose money and get it back again, if you’re sick you can often get your health back again, but once the time has gone it is gone and is irretrievable.

Start to capitalise on the time you have and get a whole lot more done.

Just because you’re doing a lot doesn’t mean you’re getting a lot done –many people just seem to be running in the same place.

We believe – Once the time has gone we cannot get it back. That is the most crucial resource (time).

The only constant is change

We all face changes every day – whether it’s a simple as a change in the weather or something as significant as another wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Changes are a normal part of life; the problem is most of us don’t like change – we like certainty.

However, learning to expect change has brought me hope during challenging or unexpected life events.

Rather than worrying about all the changes occurring, let’s accept the concept of having a useful belief about the changes that are happening around us and seeing what good will come from them.

We believe – Change is the only constant and if we do not change we can become extinct.

This too shall pass

How often do we need to hear the world as we know it is coming to an end, before we realise that the world as we know it has not come to an end?