Last year in January 6, 2009 article, "This year the economy will enter a cold winter", when most analysts are pessimistic about the stock market, I mentioned in the article the stock market may be bottoming out in 2009 recovery.

How will 2010 be? What can we learn from our experience in 2009?

You cannot see the Future looking at the Rear View Mirror

Many people make the common mistakes of looking at what just happened to predict the future.

In year 2008, global stock markets fell by 50% to 70% in 2008, many people lost money investing in stocks. Thus, in early 2009 because they were "once bitten, twice shy", many people missed opportunities to buy stocks at low prices.

Most people are not financially educated and their parents are not financially educated as well.

Thus, their mindset and actions lead them to make financial decisions that lead to them NOT having enough money to retire.

I'm aged 40 this year. 6 years ago I saved up about S$250,000, and I had outstanding Housing Loan of S$200,000. If I had followed the advice "Be debt free as soon as possible" given by most Financial Planning books, I would have used my cash to pay off my Housing Loan and ended up with S$50,000 Cash then and "happily" declared that I'm debt-free.

I didn't do that, instead I used S$200,000 to Invest instead, and used the S$50,000 as a "Just in Case" fund (emergency fund).