Frustrated That Your Friends and Family Aren’t Interested in Investing?

I've been following Bigger Pockets for a month or so now, and I thought this article sounded interesting.

I tried to get my Facebook friends to sign up for an investing app called Acorns for free. And just for signing up they'd get $5 for free (and I'd also get $5). And they'd get another $5 for every friend that signed up. Plus, in the months of November and December, they were giving an additional $1,000 to anyone who signed up 12 friends during either of those months! I thought it would be a no-brainer but apparently I was wrong! I didn't get a single person to take advantage of that offer.

I've written about Acorns before. Basically, Acorns will round up any purchases you make on your debit or credit card to the nearest dollar and invest that money automatically for you. But I guess my presentation didn't work as well as I had liked. And this article may tell me why.

On trying to share the concept of financial freedom:

I remember trying to convince friends, family, and colleagues to go down this route. I thought, truly, that I was doing these people a “favor” by enlightening them! I’d approach them with something more or less like the following:

Great news! Life does NOT have to be spent behind that desk earning a paycheck so that you can invest $5 per day and maybe become a millionaire at 65, just in time to where that is enough to scrape together a passable existence until the end! There is a far superior financial strategy that eliminates the need for work at all much earlier in life and exposes you far less to the whims of the market when you are old and unable to work!

I believe that I am fairly persuasive to some, and I have managed to get multiple people in my life on this train by explaining the benefits and articulating the steps needed to get there articulately and in an easy-to-understand way.

But I’ve also ticked a lot of folks off. Instead of hearing what I’d hoped to be saying to them, they interpreted my words like this:

YOU SUCKER! You are wasting so much money on crap that is not important! You are stuck at that horrible job in your mediocre house, with your mediocre car. You’ll be doing that same old stuff for the next 45 years because your ability to handle money STINKS! Listen to me instead, because I, Scott Trench, Lord of the Universe, am smarter and more happy than you, even though I know very little about you. Change your entire life to be more like me!

When you come off like this (and you do come off like this if you try to tell people how to live their life to pursue early financial freedom in an annoyingly superior tone), you make no friends and win no new converts. Other people do not care about what you think is best. They do not care to hear that they do not know how to manage money. They do not care to revisit what they feel makes them happy. They do not care to be told how to manage material parts of their lives.

This website is primarily about investing in real estate, but this article applies to those of us in network marketing who are trying to share our business opportunity!

So, how do we bring up the subject of financial freedom, whether through real estate investing, investing your spare change, or with your business opportunity?

The worst way to broach the subject of financial independence and financial strategy with folks who have not brought up the point on their own is to in any form insinuate that the other person is “doing it wrong.” The pursuit of financial freedom encompasses almost all of the major aspects of an individual’s personal life, including their career, housing/transportation expenses, children, pets, spouse, entertainment, and money/investment management. Telling someone that they are living their life unwisely is not your job and is likely to create an enemy that loses respect for you.

Instead, if I want to share this concept with someone new, someone who has not asked me to talk about this subject, I explain to them what I am doing and why I am doing it, without any reference to what they are doing or what they should be doing in their life. I simply keep my elevator pitch to the following:

“I am house-hacking so that my tenants can cover the rent. I’ve done this a few times, and I have a nice little portfolio of rental properties and plan to continue doing it so that I can keep easily building passive income to supplement my wage income.”

At this point, folks either have their interest piqued and will inquire further about how I’m doing it (at which point I’m only too happy to dive into my favorite subject), or they have no interest and the conversation ends. If interested, I begin giving a how-to, describing what will and what will not produce a result that accelerates one toward early financial freedom.

The worst follow-up to this is something to the effect of, “You know, you should consider this approach as well!” This statement does not help your cause. If they listened to what you said, they will be interested of their own accord and will follow up.

The best way to bring up the subject is just to share what you're doing. If they're interested, they'll ask about it.

The site has lots of interesting articles and I'm sure I'll share more of them in the future!

Interesting days

Today - Love Your Pet Day, Cherry Pie Day and Handcuff Day

Tomorrow - Sticky Bun Day, Introduce A Girl To Engineering Day and International Mother Language Day

Next  Wednesday - Pokémon Day, Pink Day, Polar Bear Day, Strawberry Day, Inconvenience Yourself Day, Kahlua Day and World NGO Day,

Week long celebrations:

Feb 24 - Mar 2: Peace Corps Week

Feb 25 - Mar 3: Invasive Species Awareness Week

Feb 25 - Mar 10: Fairtrade Fortnight

March 20 - Snowman Burning Day, Kiss Your Fiance Day, Ravioli Day, World Storytelling Day, Proposal Day, Won’t You Be My Neighbor Day, International Day of Happiness and  Hufflepuff Pride Day

Week long celebrations:

Mar 18 - Mar 24: Introverts Week