I have recently been reading a load of books on investment, personal wealth management and similar titles, and have discovered that there are a lot of different strategies for creating your own financial stability. All the advice appears to point to either having a job or business on the side, or to conduct investment at quite a considerable rate.
Most of the books refer as well to the need to be satisfied in your own job. I know a crime solicitor in Nottingham who loves his job so much he will actually take a police station or court case from you at no charge and enjoy doing it. Knowing the firm he works for, I suspect the salary he receives is pretty low as well!
However here are a couple of pointers from the books I have read:
1. Obtain assets – this is the only way to have a comfortable existence – whether this is a business, a house, a pension or an investment, you have to do this first.
2. Secondly, ensure that you have money to spare on purchasing assets, and always think of the worst case scenario – what would happen if the asset backfired on you?
3. Thirdly, aim to pay off your mortgage asap (buy a house first) and use any mortgage as an investment product (I personally do not agree with this approach – I would rather keep my house out of any investment decisions I make).
4. Do things you enjoy – if you are on a fixed salary, say £35k, you will need to create business opportunities outside of work, and to do this you have to look to your own interests and skills. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment was started this way 10 years ago after I developed an interest in the internet and recruitment having been through the process myself some years ago!
5. Don’t be afraid to do something similar to others, but you have to have a handle to make your enterprise stand out.
6. Be prepared to be thrifty, not spend all your income, and work very, very hard.
Author: Jonathan Fagan MIRP MAC Cert RP LLM Solicitor (non-practising) – Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment (www.ten-percent.co.uk) – save time, skip the legal job boards and register with us! Jonathan Fagan is a specialist legal recruitment consultant, author of the Complete Guide to Writing a Legal CV and the Guide to Interviews for Lawyers. He has recruited for law firms across the UK and overseas in all shapes and sizes. If you have any questions that we have not covered above, please email us at cv@tenpercent.co.uk
