There's always a few people out there that thinks they're not the kind to be able to do investments and they refuse to listen to anything people say.

I recently did a flight back from Hong Kong and my colleague was saying that she bought this endowment plan for X years and will get back X amount of dollars put in. In the first place I'm pretty sure she meant non-guaranteed returns but her agent definitely didn't tell her that.

My other colleagues started to get interested in this topic and asked about the plan, thinking that it was a pretty good plan. At this point I had to step in and advise them to consider before locking in their money for no apparent reason when the returns are non-guaranteed and horrible. Heck, even putting it in SSB may be better.

Guess what my colleague told me? 

"Darling it's too late I already bought it so don't talk about it, it's good forced savings for me because I don't know about investing"

She has set a limiter on herself. She is forced to assume that she needs forced and disciplined savings and ignores the fact that first two years of premiums is paid to her agent. I find this very saddening to hear but I didn't talk further because I knew she wouldn't want to improve.

On the way back from the flight, I shared a cab with another colleague. She was interested to know about indexing, and we had a good talk about it, and she was motivated to learn. She wanted to know about investing and I told her to feel free to contact me anytime if I can help with anything.

It's funny how some people like to think they can't do it without trying. I feel saddened by this and hope that more people can have the confidence to learn new things, not just investing.

-WC