When it comes to Money Management - irrational behaviour?

A 45-year-old widow - believed to have lost HK$5 million of her late husband's insurance money in Lehman minibonds - was discovered on Thursday night trying to kill herself, local media reported.

Irrational behaviour - dump all eggs to buy one Golden Goose to lay golden eggs and hopefully to grow into a Golden Cow.

Having lunch with a colleague, she has about $200K saving and thinking of dumping into property next year. Wise investing or irrational behaviour like dumping all eggs to buy one Golden Goose to lay golden eggs and hopefully to grow into a Golden Cow.

The couple is working with two pre-school kids. Wise investing strategy? Hope so. Going forward. How bad and how long will this recession last? Nobody can be sure of staying employed or future earning will not be cut. Once cut, it will unlikely to be restored.

Their kids are growing up and entering school soon, their family expenses are going up, and will ever be increasing until their kids start working. Saving is going to be harder and not easier.

Expenses on kids will be the biggest single household expenses going forward after their residential home.

With $200K, and using leveraged Golden Goose to lay eggs and hopefully to grow the Golden Goose into Golden Cow. Wise investing?

The big difference between stock and property investing is the risk and leverage factors. Stocks are always riskier as company can go bankrupt, but it can be mitigated through money management by not exposing any one counter to more than 5% of your capital or portfolio value (periodically, taking off some profit to re balance the portfolio.

When you invested in stocks, most likely you are investing your own money to make money. When you lose, you lose your own money and that is all.

When you buy property, most likely you will be leveraged and you are using somebody Else's money to make money. When you cannot pay up, and since it is not your money, the lender is going after your blood to make sure that his money is safe.

When the tide is high, the beach looks so beautiful and the sea water so clear. When the tide ebbs and becomes so low, the sea water becomes so muddy, and the beach now looked so dirty and ugly. You will be sorry how you have ended in this beach.

So one has to decide the right strategy: To have an Investment Strategy of 20 Ugly Ducklings, and hopefully a few of these Ugly Ducklings will turn into some Beautiful Swans or one Golden Goose that turns into a Golden Cow.

Finally, it is ROC over a particular time frame that counts. Probably, the attractiveness in Property Investing over Stock Investing is that you can afford to be lazy and there is no need to watch the Market and property as an asset class is relatively safer.

It is damned tiring and heartbreaking to watch your portfolio dropping each day.

But, hey when your valuation of your property or your car drop, you feel okay leh.

Strange behaviour hor???

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I hope she will understand what I am telling her. Probably, by looking at her facial expression, she may think that I am a Heartlander and know nuts about property investing.