Justin Urquhart Stewart talking to Emma Wall: The reason I invest is frankly so I can actually secure my future. I need to make sure myself and my family are free from the government's or anybody else’s interference and we can look after ourselves, because frankly I don’t trust anybody else. It’s actually mostly education, actually understanding what’s going on, which is why this is so important. People need to have a better understanding of all the issues, all the facilities, and good news is that they’ve never had so much choice; bad news is they have never had so much choice. Then they need to know the rules, the disciplines to make sure they can’t do everything at once; just focus on a few things, lay out a plan to what they’ve got to achieve, and actually most of it is actually quite achievable themselves.
The investment industry should be doing an awful lot more to help private investors. We need to help them in terms of – help them educate; not patronize them, but give them tools they can use to have better understanding. After all the investment industry, they should realize it’s a privilege to look after people’s money; not a right. But allow people so to take – be involved in the decisions themselves, understanding the risks, understanding the returns they can get. Putting it all together, one of the big problems we’ve got is we don’t teach people about sort of business plan over the decades. We need to have – what do we need to retire on, nobody tells you till you’re just about to retire, and across your family.
Now link together the tax issues, the legal issues, the investment issues, it can get quite complicated. But the good news is actually, break it down and it can become straightforward. In terms of investment, you don’t need to be an expert in everything; just focus on a few key areas and become an expert in that and it will be surprising what you can do really rather cheaply and successfully.
Justin Urquhart Stewart is co-founder of Seven Investment Managment
