When things don’t go to plan… Should you change it?
So, its been a couple weeks since I told you that I was going to run the NYC Marathon. I mentioned that I had a plan and a goal and thought that I was good to go. The first week after my post went well. I had two good runs during that week and also ran the longest I have ever run (11 miles) at the pace that I set for the marathon (8 min 30 sec / miles). The next week started out well with two solid runs and then I got to my long run of the week… and the wheels came off. I was trying for 13.1 miles (1/2 marathon) and only made it to 10 miles before my body (and mind) had, had enough. To make matters worse I ran a slower pace than I had the previous week (9 min miles).
During my cool down walk back to my apartment I tried to analyze what went wrong and how I could “fix things” so that I could prevent this from happening again. By the time I got back, I had noted a couple things about the run (Time of day, food, hydration, etc.) that could be improvedand realized that it was probably just a bad run. However, I was still wondering if there were additional changes I could make. Luckily for me, I talked to my friend Matt shortly after I got back and he convinced me not to make any major changes to my plan. He pointed out that my times and distances had been improving pretty quickly and that I was bound to have a down day. We talked through my current training schedule and discussed running a bit earlier in the day, but other than that we decided that I shouldn’t make any major changes. He also pointed out that I had a long way to go until the marathon and that my current plan was a solid one.
After talking through my plan and my anxieties about it, I realized that what I was going through was very similar to feelings that many of our client’s must have as the market continues its volatile ways. During difficult times its natural to want to make changes to your plan, but these times are often the worst time to make substantial changes. It’s always good to give your plan a check-up and consider making small changes (i.e. run in the morning before the afternoon heat), but if it was a solid plan in the beginning it probably shouldn’t be changed all that much.
While I can understand your anxiety, I strongly caution you from making substantial changes to you investment strategy (assuming your initial investment strategy was a sound one) unless you have recently gone through a major life change. If you have had a life event, I would urge you to talk to your advisor. Together, you can evaluate the changes that have occurred since putting your plan in place.
Before i wrap up, I thought I’d end with a few things I’d like you to consider.
- If you have more than 10 years until you need to access your retirement account, do your best to ignore the day-to-day gyrations of the market. Retirement investing is a long-term process making the short-term movements of the market just that…. short-term events that shouldn’t change your long-term focus.
- It’s hard to get back on the savings track when you get off. If you aren’t planning to access your funds anytime soon, keep investing. Buying at regular intervals reduces the anxiety of trying to time the market (it doesn’t work) and puts the focus on the future rather than the present.
- A funny thing about investing…. The best time to buy is often when everyone has given up on the market and is retreating…remember the old adage of - Buy Low, Sell High? - Unfortunately, the most money flows into mutual funds during market peaks and the most money flows out of mutual funds at market bottoms.
If you have any questions/comments our advisors are available by phone, email or live chat. If you want to us to review your 401(k) investment strategy feel free to become a client today. It only takes a few minutes.
In the meantime, I’m taking a long-term view to my training and hopefully you’ll take a long-term view towards your investments.
Scott H
Before I forget… Thanks to Rich for his comments/suggestions to my first post. Rich, I went out and bought a new pair of shoes.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Scott, removing the registration is an excellent first step to get more traffic to your site. However, to get more interaction between members and yourself you will need to provide a true blog that can “thread” topic comments, thus allowing clients to follow and interact with any specific topic being discussed on the blog. Just sign on to most any blog to get the idea I’m suggesting. What you have now is simply a “reply form” to a specific article. This is good but I doubt it will generate the traffic you desire.
You’ve taken a good first step in opening up your website but it’s a long road to your goal that will require many more steps.
I wish you the best in your journey.
Rich
June 27th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Scott, after I posted my last comment I noted that you do inform your clients how they ca follow any responses to this entry. However, I seriously doubt that many of your clients even know what RSS 2.0 is how to use it. I realize these are hyper-links but perhaps leaving out the technical terms and just providing a laymen term for the link would help. I clicked the link to review the way it’s presented to the client but it, again, requested that I subscribe and didn’t offer any explanation of how this should be used in the future. Just trying to help you improve the user interface and I hope my comments are received in the spirit they were intended.
Rich