This past weekend I was at our cabin in Northern Wisconsin and I looked out my back window and found myself saying aloud, “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.” What did I see? What I saw was a hawk chasing a small bird. They were whipping around this way and that way. I could not believe the speed at which they were moving, literally matching each other’s turns. There was going to be a winner. There was going to be a loser. Fortunately, for the little bird, the loser this time was the hawk. What does this have to do with all of these cards that I have been discussing over the last several months? Remember, there are 25 different areas of your life where people are affecting your life and your future, and they will never be in the same room planning together for you, but today’s card is going to be something that you probably didn’t expect. The card is you.
Not long ago, a national investment company that was advertising their financial “Dashboard”. This computer program allows you to sit in front of your computer and figure out how you could win, i.e. how you could be the hawk. You could be hawkish chasing after the opportunity of returns (as long as you could catch it). The most upsetting thing to me about their advertisement is that it showed a husband and father, in the middle of the night, in an upper room at his house, in front of his computer; while at the same time, his family was downstairs enjoying time together and yet this company was talking about how you could be at the “cutting edge”.
I remember thinking this man is not at the cutting edge. This man is sitting in the dark, alone, trying to chase returns. That same company ran another ad that showed how you could do everything (like managing your money) on your phone. The ad showed a guy on his phone while he was at a Little League game with his son. You could interact with the market and be a player. You could be a hawk. Well, the dad should have been spending time with his son as maybe a coach or a cheerleader in the stands. Instead, he was scrolling through his phone looking to see if it was time to make a trade.
The reason I’m writing about this, is because I often feel the same way that doctors do. The Internet has provided so much information that doctors probably get tired of answering questions that people have about something that they read, saw in a video or listened to in a podcast. Meanwhile, the doctor has had years and years of experience and knows exactly what a person should be doing.
I often feel the same way. I've been doing this ‘gig’ for over 35 years. When I did the math, I found it interesting that the number of weeks I have been doing this ‘gig’ is 1,776. If you think of 1776 regarding the United States of America, that is the number that describes freedom and independence. So, maybe today is the day that you declare your freedom from having to worry about all of this. I went one step further and calculated the hours that I have been doing this. I probably underestimated, but so far in my career, I can probably document over 71,000 hours that I have been working to try to make people’s lives better.
So, don’t be this guy at his computer worried about money and how he is going to get ahead. Instead, let that burden go onto someone who does this for a living every, single day. Stop being the hawk. Stop being what appears to be that little bird that is being chased around and around and around. Just chill out and relax and perhaps it's time to schedule your Financialoscopy®.
