Are you disciplined? We talk to our children constantly about building healthy habits and being disciplined, but the truth is that much of our society is pretty undisciplined, especially when it comes to finances. As a financial advisor, I spend a lot of time and energy trying to educate and encourage people about the financial benefits of being disciplined financially. Every once in a while you get that satisfying feeling of seeing someone making good financial progress due to newfound discipline. However, much of time those efforts are met with the inevitable disappointment of long-standing bad money habits.
More and more the financial industry is recognizing that while it is very hard to change old habits, it is pretty easy to circumvent the process to create financial progress. Notable Number 4 in this week’s Weekly Market Review is a perfect example of dodging the discipline while still creating financial headway. One very helpful tool to get around the discipline of saving and investing money is the annual automatic increase option on your retirement plan at work. Another tool is the Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) that so many of our clients take advantage of. If you are tired of disappointing yourself with failed financial goals, consider some sort of automatic financial transaction. While within your control to change or delete the EFT at any time, most let it be. Let a few quick years sneak by and you can smile about the financial progress you have made. Our team can help you with these easy tasks. Some of the best work we do is helping people beat their own bad habits, or circumvent them!
As always, we hope you find this week’s Weekly Market Review both interesting and informative.
Click HERE for the Weekly Market Review
Trevor N. Coe, CFP®