Preparing for a Future with Volatile Markets

A few weeks ago, I gave a workshop to our client base. We were out at the Morton Arboretum outside of Chicago, and we had a little over 120 of our clients in the room.

And I talked about something that I wasn’t sure how it would land. I wasn’t sure how our clients would react to it. And that topic was market corrections.

That topic was “What do we do? And what is a market correction? And how does it impact our clients? And how does it impact retirees?”

And one of the things that we talked about intently was the emotional side of investing. 

And we talked a lot about fear and greed and how those drive our decisions.

And all the things that have led into the fear-based or the greed based decision-making. We as human beings like to think we’re very logical. 

We like to think, well, “If this is the best case, then we’re going to do it.”

But, as we all know, we’re very emotional decision makers and logic is just there to, back up whatever our emotions say.

And at that workshop, at the end, after I got through talking about all the fundamentals in the market, as people came up to me, the number one thing that they said was, “Thank you. You made me feel like I wasn’t strange. I wasn’t feeling weird feelings. And you reassured me that that was out there.”

And that got me thinking – those are our clients. Those are people that we talk to on a regular basis. 

Those are people that we’ve assured them that they’re good over and over again. And we’ve talked about their income. We’ve talked about where it’s coming from.

They know that they’re going to be okay and they’re still afraid of everything that’s going on right now. 

We talked about the news at this workshop. We talked about how the news likes to scare us and how the market’s performed over this time period.

And they’re still afraid.

And as I was thinking about that if they’re still afraid, I realized that there’s people who aren’t talking to someone. They don’t know where they’re at.

And preparation is the key. This is a time right now, as we’re experiencing volatility, we haven’t experienced in quite some time.

There’s all sorts of things going on in the world that this is a time to know more than ever where you are. This is a time to get a feeling exactly what’s going on in your life from an income standpoint, you’ve heard me talk about income. 

Where is it going to come from? How are you going to, pay for all the things that you want to pay for over the next few years? From an asset allocation, from a risk standpoint, now is the time to understand exactly how much risk you’re taking. 

Risk is something that is not subjective. There is a fine measure of risk.

Now it’s an emotional feeling too. I mean, you can be fearful of risk or you can be grateful you’re taking a risk. It can lead to greedy decisions, but it can be an objective measure.

And if you’re not objectively measuring how much risk you’re taking, and feeling if you’re comfortable with it or not, now is the time to do this.

Do not wait.

Do not wait to see what happens before you take action on that.

And lastly is tax rates. We are still at all time low tax rates. 

And there’s still all sorts of uncertainty out there with those.

Right now we’re seeing things in the market that we haven’t seen in a long time.

We’re seeing inflation that’s skyrocketing.

We’re seeing volatility that’s going up. 

We’re seeing that the federal reserve raised interest rates. This is a time that is different from things that we’ve had in the past.

And everyone always loves to use the word that it’s unprecedented. Well, unprecedented things happen all the time. But being prepared for unprecedented things allows you to take advantage of them. Allows you to keep living the life that you want to live.

It allows you to make sure that you’re taken care of.

One of the things that we always tell people is that money is not an object. Money is not something that’s pretty. it’s not a piece of artwork. It’s not a fine meal. It’s not something that you can make more beautiful.

Money is a tool.

Money is designed to be there, to take care of you, to do what you want it to do. 

Right now is a time that you actually have to work on that tool.

And if you’re not doing that, if you’re not ready for what’s going on in the world today, this is a time that you need to reach out to a good advisor. 

You need to reach out to someone you trust and who understands what you’re going through.

I’m a really positive person by nature. I hate negative thought processes. And actually I feel like what I’ve just said to you over the last few minutes is extremely negative. 

I am not a doom and gloom person, and you shouldn’t feel down about things that I’ve just said. What you should feel is you should feel motivated to take action.

You should feel motivated that if you’re doing the things that you need to do, you’re going to be fine. 

If you’d like help and you don’t have someone to turn to, I would be happy to talk to anybody. You, your parents, your loved ones, and make sure that they’re taking the appropriate actions to protect themselves now and throughout their entire retirement.