The Tales of Carmensakura

I attended a virtual financial festival of sorts last weekend.  I was expecting to learn things.  But in the end, it was the same old thing being said. The reason for these sorts of things is to increase financial literacy. But what is financial literacy? To understand your money better? To handle your finances better? One of the main things that was said in the financial festival and everywhere else was that young  people should start saving for retirement or just saving for a rainy day.  I do admit that, yes, financial literacy is important. You should know how to handle your finances.  But I find it a little tone deaf sometimes to generalise an entire generation by s aying things like, you young people need to start saving. While some young people might need to learn to save, not everyone is in the same boat. Did it ever occur to some people that, there might be a reason why young people or people in general can't save? Maybe because we earn to...

There was a financial virtual learning festival thing done in my country. So I signed up with a financial planner.  Honestly, I wasn't expecting much. I had meet financial planners before from bank and it generally wasn't a great experience. The ones I met generally focused on how we wouldn't have enough for retirement or whatever your financial goal is if you only save.  So they'll always recommend investing. Investing isn't a bad thing. But the thing that always annoys me is that they'll try to sell their unit trust funds.  It annoys me because  1) their sales charge is high (but they won't tell you this because this is their commission) 2) they don't know which fund would do well so they can be recommending me a fund that tanks I'll be honest. I'm a little hard to handle for financial planners. I'm generally pessimistic. So when people ask me when do I intend to retire, I always answer, I don't intend to retire. I'm realistic enoug...