Inspiration – Page 3 – Greg Fok Advisory

Can you invest with peace of mind?

March 9, 2022March 10, 2022
by Gregory Fok

Investing seems scary especially in the current market conditions under the Russian-Ukraine geopolitical issue and when lives are at stake.

Is there such thing as investing with a peace of mind? How is that even possible?

It takes a lot of education to understand how markets work based on evidence and science and how you can use it to your advantage. Part of the reason why you may not be having a peace of mind is that you do not have a clear plan of strategy in mind. You are only investing on news and emotions to achieve high returns, rather than with a clear plan to get you to where you want to get to.

What is your real objective?

Go back to your main plan of what is the real objective you are trying to invest in the first place. If it is to achieve the highest returns, please do not read any further. This will not make sense to you.

If you are like most people, you know that one of the key reasons is to be able to build wealth for the lifetime consumption you are going to have based on your personal individual goals you set for yourself. It could be sending your kids to a tertiary education, or paying for a down-payment for a car in the next 5 years, or your retirement funds over the next 10-15years. Sometimes, it could be to build a legacy for your children and give to the family or charity of choice.

Build a portfolio that can withstand the test of time, regardless of the crisis

Design and build a portfolio based on your desired goals you want to achieve and ensure that it can withstand the test of times when crisis comes. When you have a portfolio that is globally diversified across the world, you minimize the risks of losing all your money, because even when a global crisis occurs, there are still some businesses that can be making profits and growing in the midst of crisis, just like what we saw in the Covid-19 situation in 2020. But if take on over-concentration risks, you might run the risk of creating havoc and emotional stress on ourselves and our portfolio.

Expected the unexpected

There is risks in investing, but there is also a way to take on calculated risks only. Take off the idiosyncratic risks that can occur in any company or country or sector by way of diversification. Once that risk is minimized to the point where it is at the lowest, then expect that some volatility will be the price to pay for an increased premium of returns, depending on your time horizon. That is the way to reduce your risks while capturing the upside by finding evergreen strategies to always outperform the markets through smaller companies, higher profit companies and reasonably priced companies. Rebalancing is key to realize the profits and reposition them to continuously buy into the value, smaller and profitable companies.

Reframe the way you invest

The way most of us invest is driven primarily by emotions and what the industry has caused us to think, which is that we are smarter than the markets, so we will be able to forecast and predict the future. While a person could be lucky once in a while, it is a futile exercise if you stretch that time horizon longer because the reality is that a person is able to do that in a flip of a coin. Instead, we use research materials to understand how markets work and study the history of markets to apply the science to investing to get us the highest chance of achieving our big long term goals in life so that we can sleep in peace through wars, health crisis, economic crisis, technology crisis and the list goes on.

Put in the hard work

Unlike going to the gym where more action leads to better results. In investing, less active action leads to better results with peace of mind. The hard work in investing is patience and discipline. Patience is the ability to sit through periods of volatility when expected returns may be against your favour. The time will pass when the returns will come back to normalization, just like in the history of all crisis for the past 100 years.. Discipline to stay in the strategy and hold it out even when the going gets tough will be another virtue to have. You probably can imagine that there will be another way to make a “Quick buck” through alternative new strategies that will constantly come up. Staying invested using evidence-strategies proven for almost a 100 years keeps us disciplined. We need to stay the course, and not keep changing lanes to avoid an accident in our investment portfolio.

Finally, speak with an experienced investment advisor who looks into what it is you are trying to achieve personally and see if they can help you to reframe the perspectives of financial planning to get you to your big goals in life.

Why are we different?

January 27, 2022January 27, 2022
by Gregory Fok

I had a fellow financial advisor who was asking me for some advice..

Advisor : Could I please tap on your expertise 😊 I’m meeting a doctor to do retirement planning and old age needs planning. She’s approaching 60, married with no kids, father recently passed on at age 92 (which triggered this meeting). Judging from her address, Nassim Hill, fairly wealthy- that’s all I know yet I’ve never planned for a doctor. Any advice?

Greg : It all starts with the question, what are her wishes she would like to fulfill in her own life and the ones of the family around her? It all starts with the why – listen to her and what she wants.

A few days later…

Advisor : I asked her the prospect the question…..her response was ‘What a profound question! I’ve never thought about that. I’ve just been living!’

Learning points…

1) What are our dreams? Have we gotten off the rat race to pause and reflect about what do we really want in our lives?

2) Rather than go into the meeting armed with products, we go into the meeting to listen to what do clients really want, prepared with a heart, empathy and questions to help them clarify their own goals which they have no time to think about.

3) Our value we bring as advisors is not to focus on products but to bring clarity to help them make better decisions for themselves and their families.

#stewardofwealth

#ihavethebestjobintheworld

#ourvalueasadvisors

#MakingDreamsComeToLife

The process of Growth

September 30, 2021October 1, 2021
by Gregory Fok

When I was a young man in my 20s, I wanted to be successful. I was told to read “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, written by Robert Kiyosaki. I read it back then and never fully understood what it meant to my life until today, when I had a clear revelation…

What I picked up from the book was that I had to go from employee to being a self employed, which allowed the growth of wealth to manifest. The next level of growth was a be an investor and then to eventually build businesses.

I took the first baby step of faith to step out of my comfort zone, from getting a standard regular paycheck every month to starting my career in insurance back in 2005. And yes, indeed, it got me to the next level of growth as an individual and my finances. But it only got me to a certain level of growth.

The next step was to be an investor. Well, I was investing in a very haphazard way, trying to make a quick buck in a very short period of time (like how most people want it). I had my hits and misses but all it took was one wrong investment and that would have brought me back to where I first started off. Timing the market was another big mistake I learnt along the way. I always thought I was able to be smarter than the market and most people, since I worked in the industry and I studied my life for this. But I was WRONG…

And I thought, there must be a better strategy than what I am doing that is less speculative and less emotional. That was when I really did my research and wanted to find a way to get me to my BIG goals in life like retirement where I needed to invest reliably, sustainably in a simplified way, yet getting me the highest chance of reaching my personal goals, with the least amount of risk. That was epiphany for me sometime in 2018 when I started to build deep education, which led to deep conviction and also led to growing wealth with a “different way of thinking”.

It was hard at first, because I will go back to my old ways of investing like stock or sector or country picking. Or trying to time the market to game the system. It did not help that the financial news sells based on this approach which you can read about everyday. But shifting to becoming an educated investor allowed me to grow wealth reasonably.

But the biggest shift of trajectory happened when I know I am a business owner of the biggest, brightest and best, most profitable companies all across the world, without the need to time the company or market but to be patient as a value investor and tilt it towards the areas of higher expected returns based on almost a hundred years of evidence.

Can you imagine being a business owner to run great companies with small effort on your part, have lots of free time because you do not need to manage on a daily basis, be able to reap the profits of these companies, with hardly any risks and capturing big growth over decades? Doesn’t this make sense to you?

So I moved from being an employee, to being a self-employed, to being an investor. And today, we are building businesses within my own set of business with our salaried staff funded by me (which allows me to be more strategic – this shall be sharing for another day), and also outside my CORE business as a way to diversify and to capture growth all around as well as a business owner.

Now, our passion is all about contributing back to you and influencing you to make better decisions for yourself based on what you want to achieve. Everyone has different dreams and we respect that. Start off by writing down what is the dream you would like to see for yourself in future.

If you would like to see how you could jump to being an educated business owner and be smart about how you manage your wealth and your life experiences, whilst saving you time to prevent the costly mistakes made, I will be happy to have an initial chat with no obligations at my cost.

How do I ensure a comfortable lifestyle?

September 21, 2021September 21, 2021
by Gregory Fok

Many people dream of travelling, exploring and touring the world, hanging out with friends for coffee, lunches and high tea when they eventually stop working… They also may want to be able to continue to drive a car, shop and dine wherever and whenever they would like to.. Basically, a person’s lifestyle should not end when a person stops working and retires. In fact, studies have shown that they may actually spend more than when they were working because they did not have the time to do all that.

This sounds like a dream life, and the reality is that it costs some money. And inflation and longevity is not going to make it any easier for you.

Just to give you an example, if you are now 35 years old and would like to have a lifestyle of $4000 a month in today’s context, with a projected inflation rate of 2.5%. This same lifestyle would be $8390 a month by the time you turn 65 years old! And if you do happen to live for another 20 years, that figure that you would need by the age of 65 will probably be at least in the region of a couple of million dollars because the cost of living will still continue to escalate past the age of 65. That is just unimaginable for many people! Of course, I am over-simplifying the calculations because I have not added your other assets you have built over the years, but that figure will not be too far away from the truth.

So the question is how are you going to get to that couple of million by the age of 65?

We use CORE^TM strategies that build large amounts of wealth in a way that is evidence-based, reliable, sustainable and gets you to the goals in the highest possibility of getting you there. All these are done without need for speculation and gives you an ability to grow wealth with reduced anxiety through an appreciation of risk and volatility. But it takes 2 hands to clap along this journey.

Just to give you another example, if a person had set aside $100,000 at age of 35, with an addition of $1500 a month till the age of 65, with a projected compounded effect of 6%, it will get the person to a projection of almost $2million by then with the power of compounding effect! Every person’s situation is different and we will help you plan out what is practical and possible, customized to your personal circumstance. Sometimes, it might mean starting smaller and increasing the additions as you progress with time, but we will find ways to structure something to get you there. At least, even if you do not get to the moon, you will be at least amongst the stars.

If you would like to, at least have an initial chat to share with us what your dreams, visions and fears are, we shall see if there is a fit between us. And if there is, we will journey and help you through the trust based relationship to get you there with the highest chance of achieving your dreams!

What is the actual cost to stock picking?

September 2, 2021September 2, 2021
by Gregory Fok

When you read the financial media, there is a always an opinion from an economist to tell us, “This is the right time to sell. This is the right time to buy.” I bought into all that junk more than 10 years ago, thinking I was able to time the market. So almost on a daily basis, whenever somebody forecasted a particular direction, there is a huge temptation to do something to my own portfolio.

And it would have been increased trepidation when it was a stock or industry that I held that was being affected. Yes, I have to admit it was pretty exciting to see that you can make a quick buck over a short period of time, especially when I got it right. However, as the amount of stock portfolio grew, the emotions of fear and greed became more real as more is at stake. Which is why I only invested what I could afford to lose back then. (This is a bad strategy for wealth accumulation because the total asset allocation is usually tilted towards too much of cash or fixed deposits.)

When I was holding on to a stock that had gained 20% in value over a relatively short period, there is a strong temptation to sell out even though I know that the company will continue to grow and the fundamentals are there. Alas, when I decided to sell it, missing my appropriate price for a few days, the stock continued to soar by another 20%! Oh, I missed the boat, I would have thought to myself and would kick myself in the butt for selling it too early.

When markets turned topsy turvy during the financial crisis in 2008, all logic of buying in during the dips went out of the window, even though the company’s fundamentals are still strong. This is especially so when the crisis lasts for a few years. How many investors have the patience and tenacity to hold out the losses for 3-5 years and stick to their guns with all the bad news going on all around them, especially when media says this time is different. If you ever told any family member or friend close to you during that period, they would have all advised you to stay out of the markets in those very uncertain periods, for your benefit of not needing to lose sleep and money.

If a person had invested in during the period from 1990-2020 for a period of 31 years, into a well-diversified portfolio with equities and bonds in it across the world with almost 10,000 companies, you would easily have grown that same portfolio by 700-900% in value, depending on your risk appetite! Now, how many investors would have been patient enough to be able to capture that kind of gain? Hardly, because most investors (my past self included), would have had itchy fingers to try to put fingers into the pie to either sell out too early or attempted to time the market which we all know from history that it is something very difficult to do.

It is not just the financial cost of not seeing the long term gain in the markets, but the mental anguish, anxiety and emotional stress you go through regularly to find out whether the company can actually survive the next storm. Reading the newspapers and watching the TV can in fact create more stress due to that reason because all the financial media is doing is to force us to take some form of action and that split second decision actually creates mental stress on ourselves. And from history, many companies used to survive and thrive for many decades. In today’s context, the life span of listed companies is getting shorter, so do you want to continue to take that risk with your big goals like retirement which can span for 20-30 years?

So is there a different strategy that we can help you take? I have changed my strategy over the course of time and understand that human behaviour is a bigger component of investing successfully. And that has led me to save time, reduce anxiety and led to more financial wealth as well with a worry free retirement.

Would you like to explore an initial conversation together with no pressures to make any decision but to see if there is a fit in journeying together? Send me a message and we can have that initial conversation at my cost.

Money and happiness

August 28, 2021August 28, 2021
by Gregory Fok

Whenever I start off a conversation with someone, the person always goes straight into asking me about financial products and what I think of the market.

I was in the midst of one such conversation recently and I stopped the person in his tracks. And I asked him what he was it that makes him happy. You see, most people think that accumulating the next million will make that person happy. However, studies have also shown that once a person earns more than a certain level of comfortable income of about $80,000 a year, the incremental increase of income does not equate to the same amount of increased happiness in a person’s life.

Money is just a tool to be used to create happiness. In fact, through the work we do, I realized that once a person knows what it is that drives a person or keeps a person happy in a non financial aspect of it, then the planning around the money management becomes more meaningful.

Just to give an example, I was having a chat with this person who was referred to me and kept asking me about what is the product that he can purchase and the strategy, the returns and all the very technical things. I responded by asking him, “Before I talk about all of the above, may I know what is it about the value of money that is most important to you?” He stopped to think for quite a while before he could speak. He opened up shared. When he was growing up, he grew up with very little financial ability in his life and his parents probably did not know better either. He studied hard in school, but because his family could barely make ends meet, he had to give up the chance of education for himself to start working early. He felt lousy that he had to go through this in his life so young and so he made it a point that he was going to make a lot of money financially so that he and his family will never go through what he experienced again. And that is why he invested aggressively and also lost quite a fair amount of money in stocks (which is not uncommon). At some point of the conversation, there was even a slight welling of tears in his eyes. But he also knows that his current way of planning is also not able to get him to his goals, which is why he was trying to find another advisor other than the person he met at the bank who was only focused on the product offered.

Unknowningly, that was an uncovering of a human’s deepest desire to understand why a person does what he does. Allowing him to share also brings in healing and forgiveness to a certain sense and he was really trying to ensure that he and his family will never have to run out of money or worry about not having enough.

When we are able to identify what drives him and why with a sense of purpose, it makes the planning so much more meaningful to both himself and myself. So when we structured a financial plan for him and journey alongside with him to keep him on track, he knows that he and his loved ones will not fall into such a familiar situation again.

Happiness means different things to different people so what we do is try to uncover, understand his background, family and see if we are able to ensure he will still be happy and financially taken care of.

Would you like to be able to plan your life with meaning and purpose with a sense of happiness for yourself? Let us have an initial chat to see if there is a fit and the first consultation is at my expense.

Which is the best product in the market now?

July 27, 2021July 27, 2021
by Gregory Fok

This is a very common question that I get constantly. Most people come to me with a product perspective in mind. However, instead of trying to respond to that question, I will turn it back to them and ask, “What are you trying to achieve for yourself by investing in this ‘product’? What is your real dream you would like to have?”

If I take a few more steps back for them, will what you are trying to achieve with this $200k get you to your eventual goals?

For example, maybe this person wanted to be able to choose to stop working by age 65 and spend his time creating memories, travelling the globe for 2 months every year for the first 5 years. What will you need to put this $200k into, in order to help you get to your dreams and goals in the most sustainable manner without taking excessive risks?

Maybe after working it out, we realized that $200k will get him hardly anywhere near to where he wants to be given his overall financial situation. Then would that really be a goal you want to achieve? It could also mean that either he takes on higher risks or he might have to set aside more than $200k to speed up the process to get there, if that goal is so critical for him.

In some other personal customized circumstance, through the proper process of planning, it could also mean that he might not need to take much risks at all to get there. Maybe he has already arrived at his goal, without realizing it. In fact, for this person, it could even mean that he does not need to wait till age 65, but he could have his dream done earlier at age 55 instead of 65, just by shifting his assets and reallocating it appropriately.

What we do best for clients is to ask a few more questions to understand the dreams, desires of the person and their fears. We want to help them through the process of getting them to get to where they want. And not focus on the products we can sell… That is where dreams can be realized for you and you lead a more meaningful life.

We want to save you time, give you confidence and simplify your life for you so that you get the best out of life!

If this is something meaningful for you and if someone you think will benefit from having an initial chat with us, pls share this and we will be happy to be connected and see if there is a fit.

Is there really a need to plan?

July 23, 2021July 23, 2021
by Gregory Fok

I was speaking to a couple on a meeting a few days ago and they both shared that they are both generally high-income earners and are very comfortable where they are right now. They said that even if they do not invest their money, they assume they would still be fairly comfortable when they retire 20 years from today and have enough money to last their whole lifetime.

So I suggested 3 things…

1. The above scenario totally works out as long as the assumption is that they continue to get their income going for the next 20years and they are kept healthy and they do not lose their job. Can they guarantee that it will not happen? Would a backup plan make sense to buffer that potential loss as life can be filled with uncertainties?

2. The second is more from a stewardship perspective. Doesn’t it make sense to be a little smarter and responsible with what has been gifted to you as resources for your way of planning? For sure, we do not wish to be the steward who buried the only coin given to him under the ground as shared in the bible. And eventually find that the only coin that was tasked to him under stewardship was to be taken away as he was not a responsible steward.

3. And finally, wouldn’t you like to be more confident in knowing where you stand, where you will be heading and if your assumptions you are going to adopt was correct? We used a software programme to allow a one-time keying in of their financial info (all in 20mins or so) and project that into the future and for them to keep and maintain their lifestyle. What they were surprised to find out was that they actually do “run out” of money by age 75 if they want to maintain their lifestyle. All we needed to do is to reallocate some money from the left pocket to the right pocket and they can be able to maintain their lifestyle till 99. And still have some money left over for the children without the need to take significant risks.

What this shows is that we are able to help families save time, build confidence of their future and simplify their lives to get them to where they want to be.

If this story sounds like familiar or you know someone going through the similar experience and asking the same questions, we will be happy to be connected for an initial chat to see if there is a fit.

How high income earners manage their financial risk?

July 7, 2021July 7, 2021
by Gregory Fok

I was speaking to a senior chief executive of a MNC recently. He shared with me that he was so successful at his work that he had no time to look after his personal finance which is a common experience.

Here are some things I noted from the conversation.

1. Senior directors tend to be very busy and alot of their time is devoted to work with limited time for family.

2. They are worried and afraid that their high income ability tend to end earlier than most of their peers and they find it difficult to be rehired at a similar position or pay scale.

3. Their stress level is very high which makes them unable to continue the hectic pace for their careers over a long period of time.

4. The stakes are high to get to that position so they may not have many close friends they can share their real struggles with within the organization or even outside.

What can they do?

Find a trusted advisor who understands you and appreciates the situation you are in when planning for you.

Structure an investment plan to build a nest egg for themselves as quickly as possible in shorter periods and as early as they can. Time and automation becomes your friend.

Protect your income ability against unexpected health risks of critical illness as you have a strong earning ability over a 5 year period.

The investments should be automatically deducted from your income account and it should be a self rebalancing portfolio. This minimizes decision making which reduces mistakes and risks along the investment journey as well.

Build skillsets and close relationships with clients, staff and peers around you so that you become more difficult to replace as relationships and networks are an integral part of building any business.

Take time once or twice a year to focus on the important but not urgent things in life and you will live a much more fulfilled and balanced life.

Urgent vs Important

May 12, 2021May 12, 2021
by Gregory Fok

Can you please complete this by tomorrow? I need it urgently!

There are many urgent tasks on our plate.. and we are waylaid most of the time due to other people’s priorities and schedules especially our bosses or colleagues.

There are only a few things in our lives that are important. But these are seldom urgent.

We live in a life of rat race because we do the many urgent thigs. But we do not have time left to do the important things.

Let us try to live our lives the other way. We prioritize and work on the few important things in life that makes our life more meaningful and more impactful.

Having a conversation with us in building your dreams allows you to focus on the BIG important goals of your lives which you hardly have time to think about.