Golf & Investment Academy #5

Schwab Investing Tip

Investing today can be incredibly complex, with the number of asset classes, the number of securities and just being able to work out your risk and return. How do you sort through all that information? It takes a certain amount of time and a certain amount of expertise. And if you don't have that time or the interest in learning and gaining that expertise that's where a professional can play a key role.

It's important to remember that investing is an emotional experience. It's your money, your livelihood and your future – so to have someone there to help control those emotions – to be a co-pilot or in some cases, a coach – can be very important in helping to guide you through the emotional times.

If you take a page from the institutional world, almost all institutions have an investment committee. Why? Because they understand the advantage of hearing other thoughts and opinions. That's what working with a professional can do. You can form your own mini investment committee and get the advice of others. When times are tough or emotions are high, you have that third party opinion there helping you.

Haney Golf Tip

There isn't anybody who can't get better. Everyone has a vision of how good at this game they want to be. The hard part of instruction is working out how you get there. What are the steps that you need to take to get where you want to go? Take it from me: a professional will help you do that.

I spend a great deal of time with my students doing precisely that. It doesn't matter if I'm working with a beginner golfer or the best player in the world. The process remains the same.

In my experience, if you're an amateur and you're trying to help yourself, you don't really know. You don't have all the available tools to make you improve. Are you really making progress, are you really headed in the right direction? Do you know when it's time to change course or are you going to just stick to what you're doing?

That's why it's good to have somebody there with you – to help, reassure and motivate you. These are all crucially important in getting you to where you want to be.