Overview – “No” is a Valid Response
In your own life, are you the type of person who always answers “yes” to everything (or almost everything), even if you don’t really want to?
If you are always in agreement, what are your reasons for always saying yes? Do you truly agree with the proposition being presented to you, or do you just want to avoid being ostracized?
Whether it’s peer pressure or the fear of missing out, society increasingly tells us that it’s fine to always say yes, even if we don’t necessarily agree to what we’re saying yes to.
In investing, understand that it’s not selfish to say no. You don’t owe anyone anything, so you must learn to say no if you truly don’t want to pursue a certain opportunity or activity.
Blindly saying yes to everything may only lead to more problems down the road in your investment career. Not everything you come across will be beneficial to you as an investor.
Not Everything is Worth Saying Yes to, and That’s Fine
Could you imagine what your life would be like if your only option was to say yes to everything? Even the most agreeable people will sometimes find themselves in scenarios where they really don’t feel like agreeing.
If an investor doesn’t learn how to say no as soon as possible, they will soon find it very hard, if not impossible, to say no in the future. Saying yes to everything is akin to a habit: the more you repeat it, the more ingrained it will become, making it harder to stop doing in the future.
I see a lot of “motivational” posts, mostly on Instagram, talking about how you should seize every opportunity that comes your way. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the details right away, say yes now and ask questions later.
While it’s true that good opportunities are few and far in between, blindly saying yes to every opportunity presented to you isn’t the smartest idea – this is especially true in investing.
It’s important to understand that opportunities that work very well for others may not be a good fit for you and vice versa. Saying yes to something simply because other people are doing so is a very foolish thing to do.
Imagine you’ve invested solely in marketable securities (stocks, bonds, options, ETFs, etc.) your entire investment life – you’re happy with how you’re currently investing and have no immediate plans to expand your investment horizons.
One day, a friend presents you with a very lucrative investment opportunity in real estate. To your friend, this opportunity is a no-brainer to pursue, but you don’t have the same level of experience and knowledge in real estate investing as they do, making it very difficult to assess this opportunity.
Would you still pursue this opportunity, despite the fact you have no experience as a real estate investor and the possibility you could jeopardize your money?
No matter how enticing an opportunity may appear, you should always take a step back and give it a good look before deciding to accept or not. Perhaps you’ve experienced this before: you accept an opportunity right away, but you soon learn that it isn’t as great as you originally anticipated. This has happened to me before, unfortunately.
In investing, you will inevitably come across things that clearly aren’t a good fit for you. Instead of lying to yourself that you’ll somehow make it work, it’s much better to be straightforward and simply turn them down.
It’s Not Selfish to Learn to Say No
Let’s clear up the following false belief – as an investor, you don’t owe anything to anyone. It’s not immoral or illegal to look after and prioritize your investment goals and self-interests.
Therefore, it’s not selfish to learn to say no because you are simply taking care of your interests and well-being. How could anyone possibly get mad at you for simply looking after yourself?
Although investors have access to help when they need it, at the end of the day it’s up to them to make sure their interests are taken care of. This may sound a bit harsh, but it’s the reality: nobody else will truly care about your portfolio or your investment interests as much as you do.
Unsurprisingly, Warren Buffett has shared some wisdom regarding the idea of learning to say no:
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
It’s easy to misinterpret this quote by taking it too literally and thinking that the best approach is to reject everything, but that’s not the message here. The keyword here is “almost”.
Mr. Buffett is saying that really successful people set themselves apart because they aren’t afraid to put their interests first. If they know an activity or an opportunity ultimately won’t benefit them or advance their goals, then they aren’t afraid to say no to it.
This is a stark contrast to people who always say yes. “Yes” people struggle to advance their goals or interests because they agree to almost everything, and as a result waste their time doing things for other people. You can’t expect to advance your goals if you’re always doing other, trivial tasks.
Similarly, investors must learn to say no when they realize that they are about to pursue an opportunity or perform an activity that won’t help them at all. Time is the one resource we can’t recoup – once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Therefore, any reasonable person would want to ensure that they use this limited resource as effectively as they can. Saying yes to every opportunity in an attempt to appease others is only a waste of time.
Learn to Say No Before It’s Too Late
Investors are bombarded today with so many investment opportunities – hot stocks to buy, rising industries to consider, new online brokerages to switch over to, and so many more.
Some of these opportunities may be worth looking into, but most of them either don’t fit my current interests, are baseless speculations, or are outright scams. If you’ve ever browsed any sort of investment news site with ads turned on, then you know what I’m talking about.
Despite all this, I’m able to easily turn down all of these “opportunities” because I learned to say no a very long time ago. I can confidently say that one of the variables that have contributed to my relatively smooth investing career so far is that I’m not afraid to say no to things I’m certain won’t benefit me.
I’ve talked previously about the importance of forming good investment habits as early as possible. That’s because the earlier you form a good habit, the more time you have to reinforce it and make it more ingrained. It’s possible to change a habit, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s an easy task.
Though not exactly a habit, the idea behind learning to say no is the same – the sooner you establish this skill, the harder it will be to blindly say yes in the future.
Of course, the opposite is true as well: the more you say “yes” to every opportunity that comes your way, the harder it will be to turn things down that truly don’t interest you because your gut reaction will always be to happily oblige.
If you don’t learn to say no today, by the time you want to it’ll already be too late. In investing, there are some mistakes that can’t be fixed, no matter how hard you try – this is one of them.
Wrapping Up
We live in a world where we’re told that enthusiastically saying yes to every opportunity that comes our way is the path to success. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the details, say yes now, ask questions later.
It’s not rocket science to realize that saying yes to everything isn’t always the best course of action. There are some opportunities and activities that won’t always benefit you as an investor, and as a result, it’s sometimes in your best interests to say no.
An intelligent investor knows that their time and energy are limited, so they can’t afford to pursue every opportunity that is presented to them. If you know for a fact that something ultimately won’t benefit you, then you have a valid reason to say no. If you don’t learn to say no today, you’re only making it that much harder to say no in the future.
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