Why having an updated financial statement will make a difference?

While reading the newspaper today, my attention turned to the UOB Bank Audited Results for the year ended 31 December 2008 or in other word, financial statement for UOB Bank.

Back in the “old days”, before I was financially educated and only know how to work hard for money. I would definitely skip these pages and ignored the content. I wondered why the banks wanted to publish their financial reports to be scrutinized by the public. “Who would read it anyway?” I asked.

Now that I realized the importance of having an updated financial statement to keep track of my financial progress, it begin to dawn on me why banks and business owners got rich as compared to a typical hardworking employee. A clear distinction is that the banks and business owners care about their bottom line and use financial statement as a tool to manage their money/cash flow.

Employees only care about their jobs and unfortunately, they are not trained or educated to understand how a financial statement will impact their financial lives and retirement.

I believe because of this simple lack of using financial statement caused many people to live on financially disastrous lives.

Many people told me that they wanted to achieve financial freedom and sadly, most of them don’t even know how a financial statement looks like and let alone achieving financial freedom. Most of these people got scammed to join “get rich quick” scheme promising “financial freedom” only to get burned later by their lack of financial education.