Lessons, relearned lessons, and maybe a thing or two that can be written in permanent Ink
It’s December in the year 2024 and as we close another chapter in the annals of the history book there are some things that 2024 taught and retaught.
Time is your most valuable resource. You can’t convince me otherwise. We had some of my favorite clients, including my own father, graduate to glory in 2024. I’ve got a kid that is 16 now and driving and it feels like yesterday I was buckling her into a backward facing car seat. We can’t rewind the tape. There is no redo. Time is money they say. Well, the opposite can be true. Money can be time. It can let you do the things that you want to do. Like money, time can only be spent once. Spend both well and with intention.
Hope is wild. It has the ability to move things in an upward trajectory like few other human emotions. Helen Keller said that “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” Think about the hopes that were part of the 2024 story. The hopes of AI, the hopes of the Bitcoin crowd, the hopes of another Taylor Swift concert tour. Hope has great power. Sometimes it can have too much power. The drug of hopeium has taken many a great story further than they should have gone. Be careful with hope. It may spring eternal, but sometimes springs dry up. Fill a water jug for later just in case. Sometimes it feels like people don’t know where that spring can be found. Give them some of your water…better yet, point them to a spring. When you’re known by just one name, like Shaq or Oprah or Prince (before he rose to ‘symbol status’), you’re kind of a big deal. Tertullian, the first theologian to write in Latin, was a one-namer. He said that ‘Hope is patience with the lamp lit’. I think that’s the best way to think about some of the hopes of 2024. Maybe the hope we have is not misguided. Maybe it’s right on the money. Certainly it’s better to have your lamp lit to do the work necessary for that upward trajectory and we better have the patience to get there. I have no idea if the AI hopefulness is real. I certainly don’t know what will become of crypto. One can only hope in Taylor’s return…not this one…but one somewhere. I do know that my lamp will be lit for the future and I’ll be patient, doing work, as it comes.
We’re only 1,416 days away from the most important Presidential election, EVER, IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD!!! That’s said with a bit of sarcasm if you couldn’t tell. I thought you said the 2020 one was the most important. Didn’t you tell me 2016 was the most important? You and your money made it through this year. You made it through 2020. You made it through 2016. You’ll most likely make it through 2028 when we get there. People will try to convince you to the contrary. Try to get 300,000,000 people to agree on something. Let me know how it works out. Politics and your money are not like peanut butter and jelly. They’re more like peanut butter and ketchup. I’m sure someone in your circle likes it. I doubt it’s a good idea to try it.
More money makes you more of who you are. We’re on a good run here the last couple of years. You probably have more money than you did 5 or 10 years ago in your account if it’s been invested in a diversified manner and you haven’t tried to time the market. A good friend and colleague, Brian Kurtz, told me once that he had a client tell him ‘Money just makes you more of who you are. If you’re kind and gracious, and giving and hard working more money just makes you more kind and gracious and giving and hardworking. If you’re a jerk…more money just makes you more of a jerk.” Home run. Bullseye. Couldn’t be truer. I’m sure there are exceptions but I’m certain that it’s the base case. If you took concentrated bets on risky things in the past, you’re probably more concentrated and taking more risk today. If you were fearful of a downturn before, you’re probably more fearful now. ‘My statement has never said $1,000,000 before and I don’t want to see it drop.’ Guess what? When it gets to $1,200,000 you’re not going to want to see it drop either. Guess what else? It will. At some point. It has before. It will again.
Unknown is the only known of the future. If you pull out a deck of cards and shuffle them very well and then lay them in a stack face down in front of you, there are some things that you probably can make an educated guess about, right? There are probably four aces and four twos in the deck. There are probably black ones and red ones. Then the questions will get a little fuzzy. Does it have one joker or two? Does it have a weird third card that you’ll never use? Do they use the traditional shapes of the suits or some different dog breed for each one? The fuzziest question is what card is on top? 1 out of 52. Those are good odds compared to the odds of trying to figure out how 8 billion humans across 195 countries with 359 million companies will interact over the next 365 days.
“And the Grinch raised his glass, and led the Whos in a toast. To kindness and love, the things we need most!” Amen Grinchy, Amen! Of those 8 billion people we touched on before, the World Bank has updated the international poverty line to $2.15 a day. If you have $800 set aside you’re doing ‘ok’ by world standards. If you’re reading this in English (or at least my public education attempt at English), and especially here in America, $2 per day won’t take you very far but it’s a start and an important fact to reflect on, nonetheless. If you want to continue to save more than that $800, then, as they say, there are only two ways to the top of an oak tree: You can sit on an acorn or you can start climbing. In this case the climbing means putting a few dollars away for the future version of yourself. While you’re climbing though, be sure not to forget what Warren Buffett once said ‘someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” Sometimes it feels like the world wants to convince us that chopping down an oak tree is still a viable way to get to the top. I disagree. I can’t seem to convince those people they’re wrong though and so I realize it’s loud and scary out there. Know that we’re here and we’ll make time on the calendar in 2025 if you want to talk about how that loud and scary affects your money.