Congratulations to YOU, you’ve made it to the final day of BiG’s 30 Day Investing Challenge. Hopefully you’ve learnt a lot about yourself and where you’d like to head in life.

I hope too that the experience helps you avoid financial and investing regrets, disasters, and B.S..

1. Investing BiG Regrets

A common investing regret is not to have started earlier. For me, growing up in a blue collar family, investing was for the professionals, the wealthy.

Often tied in with this is the mistake of not realising the magic of compounding. Understanding this vital concept will make a huge difference to your financial success. Check out money and investing legend Noel Whittaker’s work and other analysts and commentators such as  5 Great Charts on Investing – Priority1 Wealth acknowledging Dr Shane Oliver, Head of Investment Strategy and Chief Economist AMP Capital.

Let Edith Piaf sing you through your regrets and any investing speed humps.

2. Investing B.S.

Slick marketing, sales tactics and grandiose claims are common in finance and investing. Get rich quick, pyramid and other schemes and just a lack of transparency have, and will continue to trap investors. Governments through ASIC, the ACCC and others try to counter them, but are often slow, cumbersome and ineffective. No wonder respected analysts like Alan Kohler mount their own revolutions to try to prevent injustices (ie his Eureka Report Day 23 to stop the unfair commissions charged by financial advisers. Although the life insurance industry is still exempt from the recent banning of commissions – beware!).

Hence the reason we show you the Guru Cops. To help you watch out for the property, share trading, forex and other spruikers with their foolproof ‘systems’. Even the internet sales gurus who have the shoeless selling shoes online within minutes (see Day 16)!

B.S. ( a given in the property investment industry) John T. Reed helps you identify and avoid it.

3. Investing Boot Camps

The investing quick fix, so many crazy claims. A recent article for a CFD trading system claimed a successful investor spent just a few minutes a day on her trades, off to yoga and walk on the beach for the rest of the day – investing done, sorted!

There are plenty of reputable training providers, such as Udemy’s ‘Value Investing Bootcamp: How to Invest Wisely
Learn the Secrets of the Best Stock Investors, Manage Your Own Portfolio, And Earn Market Beating Returns”

BiG shows you how to avoid investing traps, avoid getting frustrated, overwhelmed or As Mad As Hell about the investing industry. It shows you that not whingeing and just getting on with investing is always the better option.

During my life, extensive travel and varied working career – nursing, law, management and more, I’ve seen:

• lives cut short before people have had the chance to experience many of life’s gifts
• people working in jobs they hate or with narcissistic bosses who treat them with distain
• injustices of class and patriarchal political, economic and social systems
• people too insecure to take opportunities, for fear of embarrassment or making a mistake