Big and bold

As I work in Financial Services, I am aware that there is a lot of "noise" when it comes to good financial planning. That could mean jargon, complexity, perception and even lies. So anything that can lead to some clarity has to be a good thing and Carl Richards, a financial planner in the US has published a couple of books that aim to break down financial planning into easy to eat chunks.
   
And the main way to do this is to draw a picture...
 
A good example is the one below. Do you recall how experts said that the FTSE 100 index would break 8000 in a specific year?  Or how house prices would fall 20% over a set period?  We want to believe the "experts" don't we... they are experts after all. But we also want to believe our friend, who heard from the guy at the garage who has a mate in-the-know, about the next big thing in investments or technology or sport or whatever.
 
Sometimes however, you have to have some healthy scepticism over everything and learn from failures and mistakes. You can apply this thinking to every part of your life. I'm not talking about being negative, just make sure you don't rely on information 100% and learn why it was wrong or right.