Happy New Year!
First, my thanks to each of you who replied to my last email and shared your happy memories of 2022 and what you’re most looking forward to this year.
I received about a dozen replies and they were all fun to read.
Thank you for sharing!
Now, here’s a bit of trivia for you…
Did you know that today is National Trivia Day?
That’s right, whether this brings back memories of playing the Trivial Pursuit board game back in the 80s, or if you’ve played trivia at your local pub, we’re all probably familiar with the idea of trivia.
The definition of trivia is:
details, considerations, or pieces of information of little importance or value.
And oh, let me tell you how often I encounter “trivial pursuit” in my work as a financial planner…
“I just read this…”
“My neighbor is doing XXX, why aren’t we…?”
“What about _________________?” (insert news item du jour)
I’m not pointing fingers here either. I often do the exact same thing.
Whether we call it “majoring in the minors” or not seeing the forest for the trees, it seems that we all collectively - at least some of the time - focus on “information of little importance or value.”
I think this probably harkens back to our time in hunter-gatherer tribes when we literally had to pay attention to ALL the details around us to avoid getting eaten by a predator.
Today, most of us around the world enjoy a pretty safe existence, but this attention to detail is hardwired into our ages-old lizard brain that, first and foremost, is designed to keep us alive. I’ve written about this idea before.
Ramit Sethi, author of the book I Will Teach You To Be Rich, refers to this “trivial pursuit” as $3 questions and encourages us to instead be focused on $30,000 questions:
And by the way, Ramit’s book is great and I’ve recommended it to hundreds of people of all ages over my career.
Now, rather than give you a bulleted list of examples of how we all (myself included) often get too focused on the trivial at the expense of the meaningful, I’ll just say this…
Retirement planning and financial decision making really boils down to just a few areas, all of which we control to some degree or another:
Time
Cash flow
Risk
And instead of expanding on each of these here today, I’ll simply refer you to this 2009 article I wrote which I still believe and practice today, 14 years later.
There’s nothing wrong with getting caught up in the trivia of our lives as long as it isn’t distracting you from the important work of being deliberate about who you are and how you want to live your life going forward.
And this being the season of New Year’s resolutions and what-not, there’s no better time than today - National Trivia Day - to live your life and make your financial plans and decisions purposefully.
If that’s something you’d like to discuss or that I may be able to help you with, hit reply and let me know.
And I hope 2023 is your best year yet!
Links & things
My friend Brian shared this in one of his recent email newsletters, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a 15 minute TED talk about:
I recently hosted a webinar on the use of advanced home equity strategies in your retirement planning. A few of you joined us live (thank you), but if you couldn’t make it, here’s the recording. I hope you’ll check it out and let me know what you think.
With all the negative “news” and events of 2022, it’s easy to dismiss it as a year we’d just assume leave in the rearview mirror and forget about. But there were some pretty amazing things that happened in 2022 which are captured in this article from The Atlantic:
Thank you, as always, for reading.
And if you have any questions or an idea for a future newsletter, blog post, or YouTube video, I'd love your input.
Just hit reply - I read (and appreciate) every email you send.
Until next Wednesday,
Russ