TPP396: How your ego is sabotaging your property investment dreams (and what to do about it)

What is delayed gratification?  Back in the 1970’s a psychologist named Walter Mischel performed an experiment on children to monitor their behaviour.  He placed a marshmallow in front of them and told them if they didn’t eat that marshmallow by the time he came back in the room, they could have two.  You may have seen something similar doing the rounds on social media with parents trying a temptation test on their children.  The idea behind the experiment was to see if the children could resist having something pretty good right now, to gain something even better in the future.  That’s delayed gratification.  Here’s what to expect on this week’s property podcast episode  Believe it or not, delayed gratification plays a part in investing today. It means having money now, and not spending it so your life can be better in the future.  So in this week’s episode The Robs are going to share some real life examples of why it can be damaging not to delay gratification, and are also sharing their thoughts on how you can do it more successfully.  In these real life examples we’ll hear about one family who spent every penny they had coming in.  They would buy fancy cars, live in a big house, go on expensive holidays, but they didn’t have a savings pot for a rainy day.  On the other hand we have a guy who’s worked hard for eight years and sometimes thought about giving up. But he didn’t, he persevered and now he has his 10th property and is financially independent.  How can delayed gratification affect your property investment dreams?  Unfortunately, the majority of the country works like the first example.  We want everything handed to us, we want things quicker and we want them now. A lot of us aren’t willing to wait for the things we want, we’re a pretty impatient generation.  And of course, social media can play a big part in this. You may see someone on social media that’s living out your property investment dreams, or it at least looks that way. But it might not actually be true.  Sometimes your ego can get in the way of this. You may feel like you’re in competition with other people who are doing the same thing as you. And that’s where your downfall will be.  So, how can your ego and delayed gratification affect your property investment dreams?  Tune in to find out.   In the news This week we’ve got two news stories for you that we couldn’t not talk about.  The first is ‘Boris Johnson plans 95 per cent mortgage scheme’. In the latest conference a few weeks ago Boris Johnson seemed to put property at the top of the agenda and introduced generation buy.  In a nutshell, this seems to be a rebranded Help to Buy scheme trying to encourage mortgage providers to offer 95% mortgages.  The second news story we wanted to share is ‘House prices soar by 7.3% in September’ from the Halifax. This is the steepest annual increase since June 2016 according to their latest index. It’s absolutely bonkers that this is happening during a pandemic and we’ll certainly be going into more detail on this in the market update in a few weeks time.   Hub Extra For Hub Extra this week we’ve got a quote that ties in pretty well with today’s podcast topic and it’s from Abraham Lincoln. ‘Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most’. It’s all about what you want the most in the world and if you’re able to make short term sacrifices in order to obtain the thing you want the most.    Let’s get social We’d love to hear what you think of this week’s Property Podcast over on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. You might even have a topic you’d like us to cover in the future - if so, pop us a message on social and we’ll see what we can do. Make sure you’ve liked and subscribed to our YouTube channel where we upload new content every week!  If that wasn’t enough, you can also join our friendly property community on the Property Hub forum. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.