Trading and Family : Telling your Loved Ones About your Trading Goals

It is not a secret that most of us are not alone in our lives and that whatever decisions we make to change our work, investments or live style will affect other people around us. One of the most important aspects of trading - which often goes unnoticed in most websites and books - is dealing with your family when getting into the forex market. This is not as easy as it may sound and it is often approach in the wrong way by people who want to start a path to earn a living or a retirement income from forex trading. On today's post I will try to tell you what I believe is the best way to approach your loved ones, how you should make them picture forex trading and what parameters you need to agree upon so that you can treat for forex trading as a serious business endeavor.

First of all you have to understand that your loved ones are not into forex trading, probably don't know what it is and - in most cases - your family will not be very knowledgeable about investments, financial instruments, day trading, etc. The first big mistake people make is to approach their loved ones with a "dream" instead of a business. If you tell your partner and close family that you will be trading for a living most will give you a look that is better described as "keep dreaming". It is not that your family don't want you to prosper, it is merely that you are approaching them with something that they know is not so easy to achieve and that few people ever get to. Even if your family has never been involved with trading it is common sense to see that if it was so easy everyone would be doing it and well, this is simply not the case.

In order to approach your family and even more in order to approach your spouse -which may have a financial say in the matter - you need to tell them that you will start to learn how to trade and that your goal is to achieve a consistent long term profit. Perhaps the first question your family will ask you is how much you plan to make and your answer to this will be a simple : I don't know if I will be able to make any money but I will not lose more than X. The best thing you can do when you begin is to focus ENTIRELY on financial loses when you talk to your family. Tell them that MOST people lose money in this market and that your first goal will be survival.

Of course, some of your family members will probably raise an eye brow and wonder why the hell you want to try this anyway and you will tell them that you want to start a business and that the first goal is simply to make money in the long term and have controlled loses. That whatever you do you will never lose more than a set initial capital (1000 USD is a good place to start) and that if you lose that you will quit. Making you trade with such restricted capital will make you think a lot about your trading decisions and use small cent accounts in the beginning, however there is no rush, you are starting up a business.
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Another very important thing you need to do is to talk about the time that will go into this since it is an additional thing that can be extremely time consuming so you will set a given time every week that will be "forex business time" a time when you will not be disturbed and when you will concentrate on trading, system development, etc. It is a time to learn about forex and trade the market. There are systems that can be traded only once a week or automated trading systems that can be maintained and analyzed in a few hours, there is no need to become a "full day trader" you just need to come up with a trading schedule that works for you. Remember that right now there is no pressure to make 10000% or whatever, in this phase the only important thing is that after a few years you will be profitable (any amount) or at least you will still have trading capital.

After a few years you will now have something to show and something to talk about from where you can build true expectations not a "fluffy dream" that your spouse will internally laugh at when you talk about. You can then sit down and say : look, I have made X% the past few years and I have never lost more than Y%, I now know how to control risk and be profitable in the long term, I want to increase the investment to A amount of money and my stop-trading level will be B. Your family is now going to look at you like you are really onto something, that you know what can be done because YOU have done it and that you can actually control your risk and be a serious investor.

Truth be told, the only way you will convince your family about forex trading being worth doing and pursuing is through your OWN personal results on an account they have seen you trading for a given period of time. If you tell them "that guy made a fortune" or "I can become a millionaire" they simply won't care since they don't know this can be done and they haven't seen it done. When you come to them after a few years with a 15% average yearly return and a 7% maximum draw down they will think - this guy/gal knows what he/she is doing, he/she controls risks and he/she can now paint a long term picture that is more realistic.

So to sum it up, my advice is simple: In the beginning just tell your family you're after something that may or may not work out but - in the worst case - you will only lose X amount of money and then after a few years show them your results and what you achieved and build long term goals from there. It never ends well when you tell your family that you will make a fortune from forex trading only to have them say "I told you so" after you wipe your first account. As I have said a few times, approach it like a business and not like a get rich quick scheme.

If you would like to learn more about automated trading and how you too can design and trade your own likely long term profitable systems with sound risk and profit targets please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !