Page 2 - Trading #101 Course – Part THREE: SETTING UP YOUR BUSINESS – www.traderscoach.com

TRADING #101 COURSE – PART THREE: SETTING UP YOUR BUSINESS – WWW.TRADERSCOACH.COM

Chapter 13:

Managing Your Money is a Serious Business

Often, as a society, we are so focused on the day-to-day job of earning a living that we
forget the fact that managing our overall finances is important business. It is just as
important as our day job. We can get in a rut and without even realizing it become like
hamsters on a treadmill.

In grade school when we’re kids, there are no required courses that highlight the
importance of personal finance. Rather, as children growing up, we are left to figure it
out on our own. We’re required to take general courses in math, science, English, and
such, but there are no required courses that teach us how to manage the big picture
from a purely financial standpoint.
Instead, we are prepared to identify a vocation and a job and to make a living at that
job. But what about how to manage the money we earn at our day job and how to
manage our home finances? Your home is like a mini corporation. You could even call
your household “Home, Incorporated.”

It seems that every kid in high school should be required to take a course in personal
finance to show them how serious this business is from the very start. And in doing that
they’d need to learn basics like how to balance a checkbook, identify (and increase)
revenue, identify (and reduce) expenses, develop a budget, and plan for the expected
(and unexpected) future. This course would teach kids the value of making difficult
choices to stay on track and achieve their own planned goals.

Sounds a lot like a business plan, doesn’t it? Well, yes, in my mind the world would be a
better place, financially at least, if every household prepared a business plan and
followed it. If you treat your money like a hobby or an afterthought, you are not giving it
the attention it deserves. Now is the time to take control and treat your personal trading
and investing as the serious business that it is.

Trust and Financial Advisers

Back in the early 1970s, before Charles Schwab came onto the scene and enabled the
average investor or trader to place one’s own trades electronically online, things were
different than they are today.

The only way for average investors or traders to enter and exit market transactions was
for them to work through an adviser or broker, and pay this person commission fees that
were astronomical compared to what they are today.

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