Investing, Financial Planning, Life Insurance etc

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I am quite dumb when it comes to buying a house, or investing in life insurance or any financial planning.
I often notice that my NT friend and cousins are always doing much better then us.
They are financially well settled they know the market rules...they know how much actual carpet area of flat against
what the builder is quoting
Recently i bought a flat its in a remote area and travelling there is difficult but i wanted to invest
my NT friend was suggesting against buying there but i checked out in the city everything is so expensive
and the process to get loan, paying of the loans plus other paperwork is complicated.
do other aspies find all this process cumbersome is the mind stressed out or confused while taking this decisions.

i had to rely on my NT older sister to help me decide which postage stamp-sized property to get on my limited income. there are lots of things to keep track of, more than i can keep in working memory at any given time. i rely on 2 financial advisors to keep track of my modest fundage, as that too is so complicated that i would fall down on the job [go totally broke] if i tried to do it all myself. for real estate you need a buyer's agent, one who knows what your needs/financial limits are and is in your corner. this agent will keep you abreast of issues you need to be aware of. if you do this yourself you need to do a lot of homework first. you will need to hire the services of a home inspector to make sure the place you are seriously considering is structurally sound and not laden with problems. you have to consider location, also, and the type of neighbors you will have. if you have physical issues you would not want a multistory abode, a single story will save you from having to lug things upstairs and down. for this reason, and also if you don't like suffering the sounds/vibrations of your neighbors [or if you are a professional musician who must practice], a condo [at least an upstairs model] is out of the question, as the only ones that offer sound insulation between adjascent units cost gigabucks. also, condos charge you monthly "maintenance fees" and some charge condo owners association annual fees as well in addition to annual unit property tax. i would avoid condos if i were you, unless you are wealthy and you gotta have the high-priced high-story city skyline view.

if you are buying a house in a place chockablock with other houses packed in tightly, you will want a 6-foot [or greater] fence between you and them, in addition to thick walls and multipane insulated windows not only for efficiency but to keep the noise outside. if you are buying out in the country you may need to know how much driving you'll have to do to go into the closest civilization for shopping for your daily/weekly needs, whether there is cable far out in the country where you may move, high-speed internet service [at least in america where there are large pockets of dial-up-only internet service far from the closest dsl availability]. you will have to find out if there are any additional neighborhood assessments [surcharges on your property tax to pay for neighborhood improvements to infrastructure [such as new sewage lines for example]- these can be steep. does your new place have its own car-parking instead of on-street parking? avoid on-street-only parking like the plague! does your new place have baseboard heating? that takes up floor space [limiting where you can place furniture] and is inefficient. does your place have an old oil furnace? those can make a mess of your place when they malfunction. a heat pump? if you live in a cold area the lack of a heat pump can mean tripled electricity bills in the wintertime. some neighborhoods are deeded or covenant communities run by homeowners associations which have annual dues and strict lists of homeowners restrictions [IOW you can't paint your house any but association-approved shades, you can't have older cars parked in front, no tv antennas, lawn must be strictly maintained, etc.], these places are to be avoided like the fascist associations they are. AVOID THEM! you see how many things there are to keep in mind? this is just a sampling of things to entertain while you are shopping for a new place.

p.s.- if you must get insurance [IOW if you have dependent children/partner in your familial care] buy term life insurance, it is cheapest and has just what you need to insure that your survivors will not be left in the financial lurch if you depart prematurely. but don't buy ANY life insurance at all if you have no children or dependents to support. there has to be a beneficiary, you know. and "whole life" or "universal life" policies are just term insurance with an investment appendage. stick to term life and invest your money in a low-cost plain-vanilla total-return-type index mutual fund or selected basket of stocks/bonds/REITs et al, with fat dividends. this is easiest if you let a conservative money manager do the legwork for you. they are generally worth their traditional 3% take, as long as you don't expect them to make you rich anytime soon.

this building is just under construction i dont know about neighbours etc now but yes its just one floor so no climbing up and down much...
its a investment for old age
i know its difficult to do financial planning i find everything confusing.

Auntblabby has mentioned term life insurance here and she’s right – if you have dependents, you might want to consider this. This way the death benefits that your beneficiary receives could be used to pay off the mortgage and obtain full possession of your home. It would be an asset your family could enjoy the rest of their lives.

Currently, start with term insurance which is very affordable and easy to understand. You’ll find aggregator websites that offer free life insurance quotes an easy way to get the best life insurance policy for yourself. Don’t be intimidated by people who seem to know the ropes and seem to get ahead in life. Study hard, do your research on the subject, and ask the right people. There is a wealth of information on the Internet and several forums that you could join to help you make the right decisions.

Denise Mancini
Disclaimer: I work for AccuQuote and this is my personal opinion.

welcome to WP, Denise

Denise welcome to WP
and thanks for the advice
I do take decisions but after couple of time i realise i had taken wrong decision
this as been going on from many years now im kind of fed up

I'm terrible at investment managing. I have to pay someone to do that for me-- and I have to have someone else help me choose someone I can trust. I just can't do it and as much as I would love to learn (I find a survivalist who can't thrive in our current society a miserable irony) I don't really have any hope of it ever happening. I figure the best I'll ever manage is knowing enough to know a bad FA when I see one.

I'm very good at budgeting. This much goes in, this much has to go out, this is what you have left. Cut there first and keep cutting until the first number is bigger than the second one. Very concrete, fairly simple mathematics, no letters involved. The only advice I can give is WRITE IT DOWN. WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN. IN AS MANY DIFFERENT WAYS AS IT TAKES.

I'm also fairly good at picking houses. Not from an investment standpoint-- but I'm not looking at them from an investment standpoint. I just eliminate that because what I want is a place to live where we can be ourselves with minimal trouble. If it's not going to give minimal trouble, then it has to be dirt cheap.

Some of my success has to do with low expectations. Whatever other people think success is, I'm not interested. A dry place to sleep, a door I can lock, heat, light, running water, a place to perform the Three S's. That's what a house is for.

I bought two sh***y trailers when we were in college-- but they paid for themselves in saved rent in a matter of a couple years, even after repairs (if you can do some really basic stuff, there's not all that much to break). I was looking for something cheap that didn't leak in a neighborhood that wouldn't get us killed or leave us utterly dependent on the car. I got it. My NT husband ignored my warnings and bought a falling-down fishing cabin at the absolute top of our price range-- five years of hell. Now we get to sell it.

Again, the best I can advise is WRITE IT ALL DOWN. Before you even start looking. Read, highlight, summarize, make notes in the margins, condense that into a notebook. Write down what you need, what you want, what you're looking for, what's a deal breaker. WRITE IT ALL DOWN. Let the notebook be your working memory. I have to do this because I simply can't think about more than two things at once, and one slot is always taken up by Things NTs Don't Think About.

I'm dead before I ever start if I don't WRITE IT ALL DOWN.

WRITE IT ALL DOWN, AND MOVE SLOWLY. At a glacial pace, if necessary. One of the greatest things anyone ever taught me was when my daddy said, "Girl, you're like me. You're smart if you don't let yourself get in a hurry."

i find it irritating to write it down.....so much information to process bogs me down

Oh, it irritates the s**t out of me, too. I get frustrated with it. Every time I set out to teach myself something, I ask myself if it's worth going through that process first-- and, to my shame, there have been things I decided simply weren't worth the hassle to learn.

Then, I guess everyone does that. Some educations just aren't worth tuition.

No guarantee it would work for you anyway. All I know is that it works well enough for me.

I'm pretty good at budgeting and I manage my own stock portfolio. I tend to believe my AS gives me an advantage when it comes to investing in stocks. I'm a practitioner of "buy and homework" where you buy stocks and evaluate each stock on a weekly basis. Each week rank each stock according to your research and the stocks' performance. It's been working out for me.

Perfectionism is common amongst those on the spectrum. But such perfectionism can be paralyzing. If you want to start doing better with your money, realize that you are going to make mistakes. The key is learning from those teachable moments and making them stick.

I read the above posts. Hope this helps. Should you buy a house, you may want to do the following:

(1) Life Insurance policy worth twice the value of the house.

(2)Set up a life estate with a good attorney. It should have the following:

Will
Revocable Trust
Springing Durable Power of Attorney
Health Care Power of Attorney
Living Will
Mortuary Planning Sheet.

(3) Find yourself a good financial planner

(4) Find yourself a good tax pro - preferably a CPA or EA.

If you check my previous posts you'll find one explaining a life a estate in detail in layman terms that are easy to understand.

Hope this helps!

-Longshanks

double post

It can definitely be done. I budget, build excel spreadsheets to forecast and invest myself and do my own taxes. In fact I'm employed as a "stockbroker", which takes extreme focus and I'm learning social rules as fast as I can. I'm not sure everyone has caught on to my awkwardness yet. Finance is just one of my subjects that I've taken to an aspie level of knowledge (obsession). Like NT people we all have our strong subjects and others that need work so don't worry about it. There are a TON of books and resources to help you. As for advice it's hard to say without knowing alot more about your situation.

Also don't get too complicated for your situation. If you have no dependents, assets (outside of workplace plans, ie 401k), or make more than 200k year you probably don't need a complex plan. You can skip the wills, estates, life insurance, CPA, broker, etc. If your situation is simple just care care of the basics, 6-12 months of emergency savings, long-term savings (preferably a 401k/IRA) with 10%-20% of your income, including employer match. Pay off "bad" debt like credit cards, car loans, other installment debt with high interest rates, then learn to live on your paychecks.

As for buying a house just remember that the realtor and mortgage person are commissioned sales people, they WILL work with you in the way you need worked with to make sense of it all. There is a multi thousand dollar paycheck at the end of the deal so just sit back and remember you are in control. Ask questions, take time to read documents etc.

Good Luck!