Recently I read a survey on a famous social networking site. The author was asking a very broad question – what is the best financial tool you ever used?
Well, we at doitinvest.com do not pretend we know which one. But the survey has revealed some interesting facts:
a) Qualitative factors are as important as the quantitative tools
People mentioned trainign (especially simulation games for financial planning or for accounting, very useful for businesses), thinking outside the box or even saying no to some selling opportunities (see the previous blog with an author who has make this very popular).
Long story short, doitinvest has deducted that if you have the reight tools, if you want to make profits out of your investments you need to use them differently.
The difference in using the financial tools is given by your knowledge and your approach. Here people mentioned caution/due dilligence (understandable in the current business crisis) and inovation – a little bit hard to get together. These things are more than 20,000 years old after al, they are at the core of the marketing..and yet investors keep stressing them.
b) Basic financial tools
Most of the people mentioned spreadsheets (Excel) and the basic financial techniques, such as using ROI, EPS or simulation techniques. One answer even regarded this as a generic approach and mentioned that it does not actually matter what specific tools you use, as long as you have the knowledge (brain and excel approach). People need to thing about their investments approach and look for expert advice if they want to start big, which is more than ok if you think a little bit
c) Specific financial tools
Well, the web is full of these. For budgeting, which is considered of paramount importance for the financial managers of all the companies, they suggested using COGNOS, Oracle, Hyperion or even less known solutions such as plannersLab or grw. As for the investments, everybody seems to have their own favourite sites which feeds them with data, from Ms Money to SeekingAlpha. After all, investing is a matter of education and habits, and my conclusion after overviewing the whole survey was that the the investment behaviour is fully linked to one’s personal experiences, and not the other way around.
And after all, everything starts with managing your personal revenues so that you remain with money to invest. So back to the basics, people reccomended mint.com and the e-money advisor several times, especially for those who are familliar ith the investing techniques and want some easy-to-use tools online. These sites have come up again and again in the reviews, so I guess we at doitinvest.com should be mentioning them too.