Don't Be Hysterical, Be Historical

In the opening paragraph to a chapter in my new book on financial planning, I wrote the following just a few short weeks ago:

"My grandfather would often say “There’s two types of loans: thems’ that pays and thems’ that make you stare out the winder… and there ain’t nothin’ there.” Some decisions we make we live to regret. It used to be in a bygone era that when a dog would kill some of the family chickens that they would wire that dead chicken around the neck of the dog to remind it not to kill the chickens. Investments can be like that too. Sometimes our investments make us stare out the window and sometimes they are like a dead chicken wired around our neck! Dark times come. We’ve seen three major pullbacks in my lifetime; Black Friday of 1987, the tech and dot com bubble of 2001, and the Great Recession of 2008. The goal of this chapter is to help you be prepared for the next one."- CFO Dad: Leading Your Family to Financial Freedom and Security

Little did I know that before the book had even hit the editor that I would need to revise the introductory paragraph as you have no doubt realized that we are in the middle of a market sell off. In the following posts, I plan to share with our dear readers what our advice is in times like this. Historically, these have been times of fear, uncertainty and doubt, which is understandable, but they have also been times of amazing opportunity. For now, our general outlook right now is to not panic, stick with the plan and take opportunities to buy when prices are depressed.

Jonathan Baird CFP®