What steps or considerations should you bear in mind when considering the use of leveraging as part of your business investments?

When you leverage your money, you must realize that you are amplifying the risks that you assume as an investor; you are borrowing more to invest more on the grounds that doing so will lead to greater gain in the future. However, there are plenty of dangers to following this course and that is why you need to have a few key things kept uppermost in mind before you decide upon such a course. Nothing is guaranteed in life – or almost nothing – but if you follow a few simple steps, you set yourself up in the best fashion possible.

Step 1 Never engage in leveraged investment that exceeds your own tolerance for risk

There is really no hard and fast rule for leveraged investment – except that, if it bothers you, then maybe you should recoil from it. Your own personal tolerance for risk is the greatest security barrier there is: if it seems like too much a risk, then it probably is – and it is far better to risk to little and ‘miss out’ then to risk everything and lose everything.

Step 2 Keep your business priorities in order

What are you really hoping to achieve? What are the things you want your business to accomplish? What were the imperatives in your mission statement? Any business gets itself into trouble when it diverges from its core competencies or starts to get its business priorities ‘out of whack.’ If you know what really matters, then you will know when to leverage and when never to leverage.

Step 3 Only use leveraged investment in exceptional circumstances

Never get into the habit of thinking that investing using borrowed money is the way to go; that money is still someone else’s money and, whenever something else is borrowed, there will be expectations that it will be paid back – and usually with interest. Furthermore, liability always attaches itself to those who lose another party’s money as well as their own. Only use leveraged investment as a last resort in instances where you are trying to achieve a significant corporate objective.

All told, leveraged investment should always be an exceptional matter; if you make it into more than that, you will end up with trouble on your hands. Stay modest, stay on target, and avoid investing money you don’t have –unless you really, really need to do so.