How do you balance a ‘love for spending’ and saving for the future?

“It’s self-control, really, isn’t it? If I want something, I can’t expect for someone to just hand it to me on a plate. You’ve got to work for these things. And sometimes if it’s not hard, it’s not worth doing. At the moment, I struggle because I haven’t got a boat. And that’s a first-world problem, but it’s a real passion of mine. But that’s something that you’ve got to be willing to sacrifice,” he told Smart Property Investment.

Starting an investment journey at an early age will mean some sacrifice, but asking the right questions and learning from field experts will help almost anyone make the best decisions to achieve their specific financial goals.

After all, Jetlee believes that no one could probably get into a good place without passing through a period of sacrifice.

He said: “I think you just got to make the right decisions now and look to the future ... You got to get through periods of sacrifice. You’ve got to go through these periods, then you’ll get to a point where you feel like you’ve got everything that you need and a little bit extra.”

While it’s important to know the value of sacrificing in order to save, it’s also equally vital that a person knows how to manage his finances even when it feels like he has too many.

Jetlee and his wife have gone through both periods of sacrifice and periods of having extra money, and one thing that helped them rise above both circumstances is a good financial advisor – someone who helped them get back on track with saving through investment.

According to him: “One of the reasons why we’ve probably gone to a financial advisor now is because my wife and I have gone through a period of where we feel like we’ve got heaps, and we’ve kind of lost our way a bit in terms of saving and putting that away for the future ... They provide more services than just advice around shares. A lot of these guys can coach you around how you manage your internal funds.”

His advice to budding investors: Make your processes streamlined and find an agent you can trust.

“Make your processes more streamlined so you can see how much you’ve got ... [For example], you’re saving for a boat or you’re going on the holidays. For a lot of people they don’t need that, but for people like my wife and I who just love to spend and spend whenever we feel like it, there are tools that are really helping us have the fun but then invest in the future at the same time,” Ganado shared.

He added: “[Having a financial adviser] might cost a few grand now for that service, but then that’s going to pay itself off in probably a few years and you won’t even think about what you’ve spent there. I wouldn’t have gone down that path had it not been for my buyer’s agent, Paul, no way. The relationships that guys like Paul at Pure Property have, it just opens your eyes up to what the opportunities are out there for you.”

“A bloke like me, I don’t want to sit there and stew over the numbers. I don’t want to have the relationships with all the real estate agents in all the areas where I think’s going to be. But that’s why these guys provide services is to help blokes like me get ahead with what I’ve got,” he concluded.

Tune in to Jetlee Ganado’s episode of The Smart Property Investment Show to know more about how even a “lazy investor” can find success in property investment.