I recently read Robert Kiyosaki’s book titled Rich Dad’s guide to becoming rich and he stated in that book that in order to become rich and wealthy we need to be a good gambler and a good banker. What he means is that you have to be a good saver and also be able to take calculated risks. In order to have money to invest you have to live below your means and save the surplus. Then you have to identify your risk tolerance and pick an asset in which to invest in after of course having an emergency fund. You also have to be in position where you can afford to lose money so that it won’t set you back financially. You have to be in a position to take risks. That’s the whole idea behind being a good banker and setting up an emergency fund. It takes balance.
Investing in and of itself takes risks, but not all investment risks are equal. Active investing incurs more risk or volatility than investing passively. For example with individual stock investing you have a higher ceiling but also a lower floor to fall. Passive investing through real estate syndication also has more defined risk than buying and renting individual properties or flipping houses. What I’ve learned from Mr. Kiyosaki is that we should take the calculated risk, however high it is and then learn from the possible failures and losses. If we’re too worried about losing money then we’ll never learn how to be a good investors. We just need to make sure our banker skills are up to par so that we have something to fall back on if we fall flat on our faces.