It’s been 4 months since the pandemic began. It really does feel like 4 years, maybe a lifetime. Just reflect back and think how things were in February of this year and the changes we have been through together.
It’s not just the changes, it’s the speed of the changes. It feels like a carnival ride that is spinning, spinning and spinning with no end in sight. You try to focus on one thing at a time, but the ground keeps moving and shifting. It’s like we have no control.
We tend to want to control the things that make up our sphere. We pretend that we are in control of our income or job or finances. Really, we have control over a small number of things such as what we say or how we treat others. Is it important to have control? Perhaps, but we need to learn to focus on stuff that matters to us and that we can control.
There are lots of things that matter such as our health, financial future or when we can retire. Unfortunately, we don’t control any of these directly as much as we want to. However, there are some things over which we do have some amount of control. For example, we can exercise more regularly, and spend less and save more to allow us to retire when and where we want. I say some because we don’t have total control over them. We could get sick or break a limb and not be able to exercise even if we want to. We could lose our job for a while and not be able to save like we want to. But unless the sickness or injury is a lengthy one or you aren’t able to ever find another job, you will eventually be able to resume exercising and saving.
Why is this important? Because we must concentrate on both things that matter to us and things that we can control (to some degree). Doing so will likely produce positive results for us over time, whether a long, healthy life or an engaging retirement. As a financial planning firm, we are committed to helping you get this done.
We concentrate on identifying what matters to our clients then craft a plan that maximizes the chances of successfully achieving your goals and aspirations. We focus on those things that our clients can control and less so on things that are out of their control. Examples include; addressing spending and savings, not earnings, and being conscious of the expenses in a portfolio and its diversification but understanding we do not control the future returns.
It is easy to worry about things over which we do not have control or that don’t matter to us. What’s hard is to really think about and consider those things that really matter to you and your loved ones then to identify which of those that you can exert some level of control. Once you’ve done, put in place actions or strategies to exert your control in a way that maximizes the possibility of success.
Focus on the intersection of things that matter and things you can control. At Aspire, we try our best to help our client do just that.
