I blame this (or attribute to depending on whether I succeed eventually) on Rich Dad Poor Dad and Warren Buffett. This is to the extent of changing my profession to finance after getting campus placed as a software engineer.
Please note Rich Dad is a self help book, it motivates you as many others. Beyond that it can be dangerous. You read Robert Kiyosaki other books like on investment. You will realise he doesn’t make sense anywhere when it comes to specific. Either he doesn’t want to disclose or perhaps what worked for him just difficult to mimic.
My aim is to achieve true financial stability with multiple sources of income rather than to merely follow most other middle class and achieve a single source of pension which may not be enough to cover emergencies. I believe merely investing in mutual fund who most of the times mimic the index funds with more than 50 stocks will not take me to financial stability.
There are few quadrant, I am sure you would have got a idea from same Robert Kiyosaki’s Cash Flow Quadrant. A few readings wealth value chain would help further. One quadrant or even subset takes up entire life.
Coming from an financial institution I won’t say mutual funds/AMC mimic index funds. Index funds/ETF may be one instrument . There are dedicated teams to understand thematic investments, bottom up etc. If some one think we are smarter and intelligent than fund manager then re-think. We as individual have certain advantages over them, not due to we are more intelligent than them but entry/exit timing, position size, risk management etc. And as pointed out earlier these are life time lessons.Even 59 stock wizards interviewed by Jack Schwager wiped out more than once in life.
There are lots of people covered books and suggestions in this forum. I have been writing on various subjects relentlessly, please feel free to rectify me and ask questions if any.
As a co-incidence I met few yesterday even in Airport who are gung ho on stock markets. I wrote something or shared yes day. Caution ahead!