Quora Answer: How Would You Convince Me to Invest?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How can you convince me to start investing, rather than saving money and playing it safe?”

When it comes to finance, I do not believe people should be convinced about these things.  Everyone has their own risk profile, and comfort zone.  There are a lot of other people out there who are ready, willing, and able to invest their money.

The danger when it comes to pushing the issue with people who are not mentally ready to invest their funds is that every negative movement in the market will become a big issue with them, and this will put a strain on your professional relationship with them.  They cannot psychologically conceive the idea of a temporary paper loss, and will panic, and make it a realised loss.

A bigger problem would be them accusing you of misselling.  This becomes a compliance issue, and nobody in finance wants to go through that.  Even when you are absolved, a dissatisfied customer is liable to go around complaining, and that will have some effect on your business reputation.