Last week was a tough one for the markets, but any financial planner worth their fee knows that pull-backs, corrections and recessions are all part of the long game. However, even we planners are not completely absolved of the emotional impact market volatility can cause (we feel it too), but good planners are well disciplined in how they process those feelings. We have to be. We depend on our resolve to help our clients find theirs. It’s why I am not worried about the markets today and why it’s unlikely you ever will. It’s just everything else I worry about.
When I am not playing the role of financial planner in real life or on television, I am just a 33-year-old small business owner, toddler-daddy and loving husband who’s trying to carve out a piece of the great American pumpkin pie*. Outside of my unhealthy addiction to Twitter, the aforementioned personal descriptors are also where I spend 99% of my time while awake. While they all bring me an immense amount personal and professional satisfaction, they also cause me to worry more than the markets ever will. The risks associated with them are disproportionately greater than anything found in the markets. Honestly, how could I afford not to worry about them?
As a small business owner, every brick I lay today will be responsible for how I grow (or die) in the future. Every client I serve needs to sleep well at night so that I too can sleep well at night. Every marketing dollar I spend needs to be a worthwhile investment. Virtually everything I do with my business today needs to be done constructively so that I can continue to escape the lingering fear that it all could fall apart. I can’t be caught off guard or make a fatal mistake because my business is directly connected to my family’s ability to live a happy and healthy life. As far as I am concerned, failure is not an option.
As a parent, I now have this beautiful little girl who is wrapping me tighter and tighter around each one of her adorable little fingers. Having reduced my soul into a fine pulp years ago, I’ve resigned to being there for her as much as possible. After all, the world can be a scary place. I must protect her from others and, at times, from herself. I must expose her the good and the bad so that she can be both humble and not naïve to the unfairness of life. I must raise her up to be a strong, loving, and decent person. I also know that I must eventually learn to let her go and thrive on her own.
As a husband, I rely on my wife to be our family’s rock. She holds down multiple facets of our lives and, like me, tests her physical and mental limits for the sake of our family’s well-being. It is in my blood to provide for her and our kids not because of some antiquated “social norm” having to do with our genders, but because I wish to afford her the ability to have more of a choice in what she wants to do and not what she has to do for our family. Above all, she is truly my better half, my advisor and my best friend, so none of this “Doug stuff” really works, or is even worth doing, without her on the team.
My anxiety is part of who I am and I try (often unsuccessfully) to process my feelings around my life with the same discipline used to process my feelings around the market. I am also fully aware of how fortunate I am that I get to worry about things (which are all objectively good) instead of necessities like buying food and clothing or having a place to sleep. I shared them with you to illustrate just how trivial one bad week, month or year in the market can be comparison to what we must deal with every day, good or bad. It doesn’t make things any easier when the market drops hard and fast, but at the end of the day every one has their own s–t to deal with. It will always remain on us to choose how we deal with it.
*pie adjusted from apple to pumpkin to reflect seasonality and pumpkin bias