Rationalization is the devil on our shoulder. Sometimes we know he’s there, egging us on. Sometimes we’re so caught up in the moment that we forget he’s there. Nudging. Always nudging.
The primary selling point for target date funds is convenience. Set it and forget it. All I have to do is put my money in and the fund company will invest it in a more “aggressive” manner while I’m young, and then they’ll make it more “conservative” as I age and get closer to the time I’ll need to sell to pay for retirement. Sound familiar?
Series I bonds are US Savings Bonds that the government resets the interest rate on every six months, adjusting for inflation. And, well, you don’t need us to know inflation has been getting worse. If you spend money, you know a dollar doesn’t buy what it used to. Let us expand just a bit on this point.
We are continually reminded by conversations we have with others just how vulnerable we all are to the lure of advances in broad stock market indexes.
Apparently, a global pandemic that, temporally speaking, follows on the heels of a Global Financial Crisis, has a tendency to make people think twice about what they want to be when they grow up.
Is the recent action in markets the beginning of a downturn, or just a temporary pause? That is the $64,000,000,000,000 question;$64,000 just doesn’t seem to do it justice anymore (yes, I know I’m dating myself here).
We all struggle for balance in almost all areas of our lives: balance in our diets, our work, and personal interests: our spending and saving: and of course, our investment allocations.
I don't think Jimi Hendrix and Alan Greenspan would have ever hung out, but I do think if they’d met by some kind of happy accident, they'd have gotten along well if each knew more about what really inspired the genius of the other.
We are approaching a number of turns as I type this post post at the end of December on December 29th: a Presidential administration turn, a turn toward mass vaccination, and of course, the turn of the year.
It’s easy to slip into a mindset of despair in a year like the one we’re having, but if we can manage to pause and refocus, we can still find gratitude. In my fifty-one years on this rock, I have never…