Beware – everyone’s opinion is not your reality

BY ANDREW STEWART

Opinions; it seems that everyone can have one today about any topic we can Google. We already know how a lie can spread significantly farther, faster and broader than the truth can. It’s downright scary to think how much damage a lie can do to a person’s life or a company’s bottom line these days. But do we stop and think how our opinions can have the same damaging effect without us even knowing it?

It’s now 2020 and we are entering a new year and decade of life. A time when we make new resolutions, try to engrave new habits and set new goals. We get more serious about our finances and have unabashed hopes of improving relationships. We go into hyper active research mode. We search about and speak to family and friends or the person at the gym on what their opinion might be on decisions we are looking to make. I caution you to try and avoid this trap when it comes to your finance and insurance decisions.

How many times have you asked someone how much they are paying for a particular service or item before you purchased that same service or item? When it comes time to purchase any type of insurance a common mistake is the first question being how much they pay. Why? Because we are educated on the product of insurance and then purchase policies on specific personal information. We normally don’t share the specifics of how long we’ve been driving or how many tickets and accidents we have had when we purchased our car insurance. We don’t divulge how old we were when we purchased our first life and health insurance policies; if we were in excellent health or had weight or health issues at the time. Even the task of how well we understood the advisors questions and type of policy we were purchasing may not be shared in friendly conversations, but we are more than happy to share information on how much we pay if we believe we got a good deal.

Let me share a story with you. I helped a young couple two years ago who were expecting their first child, engaged to be married and had no mortgage. They were entering that stage of life when life insurance was now needed and important to them. Now this couple had done their homework before our meeting and knew the type of insurance policy they preferred, they just didn’t know exactly how it worked and how it could be structured to fit their budget. Fast-forward just one year; I receive a frantic call from the wife saying that her mother was talking about her own whole life policy and how it keeps increasing in price each year. Her mother was adamant that all whole life insurance works the same way and warned her daughter it’s a waste of money and a scam.

Now here is my point about having opinions. There is nothing wrong with her mother’s opinion, she was just telling it from her own experience and point of view. The dangerous part is how it influenced panic and distrust. It created doubt in her daughter’s decision of what she had put in place for her family. Without going into too much detail. I was more than happy to take the time to explain to this young mother how her policy was vastly different from her mother’s. I was also able to sit-down with her mother and explain how she could fix her own issue.

So when analyzing and preparing for your financial future this decade with important questions like how much to contribute to RRSP’s & TFSA’s; how much insurance should you have and the best type of policy to have to protect your loved ones, business and health; how to invest and accumulate wisely- have a longer time perspective than just the immediate and avoid uneducated opinions.