By Nicholas Hamner
Investment Advisor Representative
[email protected]
In my office there are six plants on the windowsill and another five on a shelf. At the top of that shelf is a Norfolk Island Pine. I have no idea if it’s alive.
I water it every week. It gets plant food every two months. It still ostensibly looks like a tree, but… again… I have no clue if it’s anything more than a husk at this point.
If it’s literally right where I can see it, why don’t I know? Because if I checked and it wasn’t doing well, I’d immediately have a new list of obligations to bring it back to health. If it was dead, I’d have questions I don’t know how to answer and even more responsibilities. If I took it out of the pot and dropped it in the trash, I’d still have questions, responsibilities, and an empty space to fill.
In short, it’s easier to glance at the tree from a distance and believe it’s doing fine than to look closely and find out.
How many of you are doing something similar with at least one part of your retirement plan?
Maybe there’s an old 401(k) you haven’t rolled over because you forgot how to log in, and getting the information from your former employer opens old wounds. Maybe it’s an inherited account full of Apple stock — or shares of Blockbuster and Circuit City — and you don’t know what you’d do in either case. Maybe you’re caring for an aging parent and can see, firsthand, what that path may look like for you, yet long-term-care planning remains in the “I’ll look at it sometime… later” category.
We avoid big decisions because our brains treat them like threats. It’s uncomfortable, exhausting, and easier to ignore them. Our brains magnify negative outcomes while overlooking potential positives, which is why we neglect gains and mourn losses. And in trying to avoid the anxiety, we focus on everything and create paralysis by analysis.
Quite simply: when faced with something we don’t want to do, we are psychologically inclined to find a way not to do it.
But the world is full of examples of people who waited too long and had to live with the consequences: investors who moved to cash and never got back in, people who neglected their investments until fees ate away their savings, the list goes on.
The best thing you can do in a situation is the right thing. The next best thing is the wrong thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.
Don’t let yourself be too scared to take action.