Your Best Investment: Why You Should Do What You Know Better

“The alloy and weight of this coin have been well tested; but tell me now whether you have it in your purse.” This is what St. Peter told Dante in heaven (Devine Comedy). If you work for your living, you must know the value of your hard-earned cash. Financial gurus have been telling me how important it is for me to “invest” or “protect” my money. Some praise diversification, others like Robert Kiyosaki (the Rich Dad) and Warren Buffet preach that “diversification is protection against ignorance."

But the Gurus are in a constant error, a scientific term meaning that a judgement is based on a false idea. The financial gurus assume that I should spend as much time earning my living in my line of work as "investing" my money.

Do I need two jobs—my regular job and my private investment job? Take for example my friend Michael who's an architect. Mustn't he increase his knowledge in architecture at his spare time to become a better expert? Or must he try to be Warren Buffet even though his talent is making blueprints? He is an architect—he is supposed to do what he knows better. Let him earn money by doing architecture. If his real talent is architecture, he should want to become Frank Lloyd Wright, not Warren Buffet; he should worry about wind conditions, not stock market conditions. And the more he approaches the skills of Wright, the more he will afford to buy.

I’m not saying you should be ignorant of personal finance and economics. You still need to know how to balance your check book or open a bank account. It's the same with mathematics: you don't need to know how to solve advanced problems to live a normal live--basic algebra is enough. So, spend time and resources at what you already do better—this will be your best investment.