Is Mainstream Thinking Really Good For Everyone?

Clarification:
I am just trying to flip the coin, to discuss about some current mainstream thinking in this article. This article is full with my personal opinion, so feel free to close this article whenever you feel sicked and wanted to vomit, please bear in mind that I am not pointing you with a gun to force you finish reading it.



Mainstream thinking,
is the current thinking that widely spread, and supported by majority of the people.

However,
how did the current mainstream thinking become the mainstream like it is now?

Long time ago there were no Facebook, Twitter and some other SNS in this world,
not even internet.
So how did those thinking spread to the public thus became the current mainstream?

According to a book I read before,
there were 4 types of spreading:
TV, Radio, Newspaper & magazine, and the teachings from older generations.

For example:
"Study hard, get a good exam result, go to university, find a stable job,
buy house and get married, have a few kids, save a lot of money to retire."

This life planning that everyone knows,
is actually came from regrets of the older generations when they couldn't go to school,
thus can't enter university and find a job,
so they can only continue farming at village or do some small businesses that hardly fill their stomachs.

Which means that a life planning that originally came from fantasizing,
passed by generation to generation,
thus became the current mainstream.

So as EPF (Employees Provident Fund),
nowadays everyone thinks that EPF is necessary,
without EPF you will not have enough money to retire.

Whenever I told someone that my EPF account has less than RM100,
they will freak out and warn me:"You not scare later not enough money to retire?"

The mainstream thinking is that you must rely on EPF to have money for retirement,
but the truth is.......
many people who have EPF still facing the problem of having not enough money to retire.

Let me give one more example about investment.

Many people think that investment is very risk and dangerous,
it will caused you to lose everything, your house, your car, your family.
When asking them the reason why they think like that,
or did they actually saw someone lost everything because of investment,
they will answer that because they watched from TV drama when they were young, especially Hong Kong drama.

With proper knowledge of investment,
we know that if we use our cash to invest,
even the company that we invested went bankruptcy,
we only lose the money that we invested.

However,
those TV dramas need to make their story lines more interesting,
so they make the characters use SMF (Share Margin Financing) to borrow money and invest,
at last the characters went bankruptcy because couldn't pay back the loan,
the life became awful,
all these is just to make the story more interesting to watch.....

Thus,
using SMF to invest at shares is very dangerous,
this thinking became mainstream after the TV station kept showing dramas....

Last example:
"working at daytime, resting at night time."

Me as a Self-employed, work at night time and rest at daytime,
not mainstream at all,
so my neighbors always think that I have no job, everyday do nothing at home.......

Is it that we must follow the mainstream thinking?
Is the mainstream thinking always correct?

Do not forget that the current mainstream thinking is spread out during the time when we have no internet,
so it will spread by TV, Radio, Newspaper magazine and teaching by older generations.

The "mainstream thinking" that spread out by limited media choices that we had last time,
is it always correct?

Well....
at least I am not a mainstream person.

Find a stable job, save money for retirement?
Instead I choose to become self-employed, I work for myself.
I invest instead of saving money for my retirement.

Actually I am not mainstream since I was young,
during secondary school,
from PMR to SPM,
I went tuition less and less while my friends all went to more and more tuition.

When SPM result it out,
I 6As, my friend 10As,
he looked at me with a stare full of sympathy, even tried to comfort me with some words,
but actually I didn't mind,
no matter 6As or 10As,
we still going form6, study in the same class for STPM,
need to study hard again.

Let's talk about the mainstream working hour,
I don't understand why banks, post offices, government departments must have the same working hour same as a lot of people,
thus everyone needs to apply leave from company to go to those places to settle their things.

If the working hour can change to 4pm to 11pm,
then everyone does not need to apply leave to go to those places,
thus increasing efficiency in works.

So why must follow the mainstream thinking of "working at daytime, rest at night time"?

Also about EPF,
frankly speaking I hate EPF for forcefully taking away the hard earned money,
then invest at share market,
(Yeah right, please have a look at annual reports of listed companies, you can easily find EPF listed as top 30 shareholders.)
so your hard earned money is taking 100% risk at the share market,
every year only receive 6%-7% returns, the rest of the earnings were put into EPF's pocket.
Took 100% risk but only receive so less on returns,
IS THIS FAIR?

Of course,
you can argue that the capital pool of EPF is too large,
so is impossible to earn high returns,
then why don't just return the money to us?
At least I invest by myself is able to earn higher returns.

That's why I only have less than RM100 in my EPF account,
I need EPF to stay away from my retirement,
I take full charge of my retirement.

About share investment,
when I started to invest almost 7 years ago,
the mainstream thinking was that is not worthy to invest at expensive shares like DLADY (more than RM10) and NESTLE (more than RM40).
The share price already so high, is impossible to rise higher.

So I didn't follow mainstream and invested at those “EXPENSIVE” shares.
Still remember someone laughed at me and said:
"You buy those expensive shares, can only earn a candy when rose by 20sen or 30sen, HAHAHA! "

I still remember I told a friend of mine who is a remisier that I bought NESTLE at around RM47,
he stunned,
and looked at me like I am crazy.

Anyway,
that's me,
I dare to challenge the mainstream thinking,
that's why I dare to use SMF to borrow money for share investment.
I believe that SMF will help me to walk faster on my financial road.
I don't want to be pull back by those thinking that borrowing money is dangerous,
those thinking that came from watching too much TV.

Of course,
I writing this article is not telling everyone to throw away the mainstream thinking,
just that maybe we can review our thinking,
how many mainstream thinking that we having is correct?
Or,
which mainstream thinking that we having now is actually suitable for us?

Investment is about doing own thinking, making own decision.

Thanks for reading.

I don't provide any buying/selling suggestion above,
please make your own investment decision and be responsible with it.

Recent articles :
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Other links:
List of articles of October 2017
My current investment portfolio
My self-introduction article

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