There's a book called "The Secret" - later turned into a film and followed by numerous other books and spinoffs - that details how you can apparently improve your life by using the "Law of Attraction".
This "law" can be boiled down to the idea that if you think about certain things then they will appear in your life.
Whilst I've never read the book, I did once watch the movie. Can't say I was blown away by its content.
One of the experts featured in the film was David Schirmer and I spent a more enjoyable hour or so a few years ago watching various news reports about him on Australia's "A Current Affair" TV programme. A Google search will likely drag these up if you wanted to watch them.
I mention The Secret as I was reminded of this film a few months back when visiting a family member in their new home. The previous owners had left a DVD of The Secret in the front room. As I looked around this large and very expensive house I spotted it and was told "oh, that was there when we moved in".
With the house emptied everywhere else I assumed this DVD had been left on purpose for my sister's benefit. The previous owners obviously knew the purchase price of the house but I imagine they figured the new owners would still benefit from learning of the Law of Attraction.
The whole "Secret" idea came to mind again this last week because I'd been sorting out my finances and had written down a goal of building an emergency fund. In fact, what I'd written in my notebook was "3-6 month emergency fund" and then on the next line I'd done some maths to calculate the relevant figures.
Then the strangest thing happened...
Two or three days later I got a phone call and within a couple of hours I had sold something that, when the payment clears, will leave me with what Dave Ramsey calls a "fully-funded emergency fund" i.e. enough money to cover all my household bills for 6 months.
Was this the Law of Attraction in action?
Or was it simply the result of making some sensible investments over the years?
In my mind it's the latter. I've had deals like this come together before out of the blue and many times I hadn't needed extra income at that point. In other words, I hadn't been thinking about making a good sale but it happened anyway.
Rather than the "Law of Attraction" I imagine that being concious that you need to improve something in your life means you take steps to improve it. And you may not even realise you are doing this. Further down the road these steps result in positive rewards.
When I was a much younger lad I came to the realisation that I would never make a lot of money by getting a job and working hard. No matter how much overtime I did I was always going to be limited by the number of hours I could work in a week. Instead I started looking for other ways to make money. I was reading books, buying courses, attending seminars, trying out ideas, making notes, learning and experimenting.
What I discovered was that there are some simple methods of making money that you can use to get together some seed capital such as matched betting, selling on eBay and selling products as an affiliate.
So, funnily enough, I used these methods to make money.
Then I used that money to test more elaborate business ideas and buy other courses. Much of the money I made was reinvested. Now, years later, I will occasionally sell one of my investments and make a decent profit.
Law of Attraction? I'm not sure about that.
Years of effort educating myself, reinvesting business profits and then being patient? Sounds much more likely.
The state of the portfolio as at close on 29th May 2020:
| Code | Sector | Date Bought | Cost | Value | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM009 LM009-2 |
Gas, Water & Multiutilities | 05/02/2019 04/02/2020 |
£2020 | £2000 | (1.26%) |
| LM012 LM012-2 |
Real Estate Investment Trusts | 20/05/2019 28/11/2019 |
£2030 | £2350 | 15.71% |
| LM023 | ETF | 19/05/2020 | £1020 | £1000 | (2.23%) |
Lockdown restrictions are eased a little starting tomorrow. 6 people can now meet up, outdoors, providing they stay the regulation 2m away from anyone not in their same household.
This is probably going to result in a spike in cases of Coronavirus, and I think the experts know this. I guess we need to start moving things along and this is a very welcome move. I also suspect that many people "eased" their own restrictions over this weekend as the weather was excellent.