February 2025

I recently started physical therapy for some reoccurring issues with my shoulder. No big deal but something I want to make sure doesn’t get worse.  As I started the regimen, I realized that the last time I had been to the physical therapist had been during the mask wearing days of Covid.  In fact, while I had worked with each of the physical therapists previously, I really had no idea what they looked like other than their eyes and hair.

It is amazing what your brain will do when it needs to reach a conclusion. What I mean is, I had no idea what the physical therapists really looked like, so my brain took what it did know and created a picture in my mind of what it thought they looked like. That picture wasn’t accurate. In fact, it was pretty wrong.

Our brains do this often. Think about when you are on the phone with someone you have never met. Don’t you have a picture in your mind of what you think they look like? This happens when we read a book or even a newspaper article. Your mind creates this visual, this image, this ‘reality’ of what it thinks is correct. I am sure there is some scientific name for it that I don’t know, but we do it all the time.

In fact, we do it with other things too. Maybe you missed out on a neighborhood party or some other fun event you wanted to attend. Doesn’t your mind sometimes imagine what happened?  We want to know. Maybe it is a FOMO (fear of missing out) situation, but I think of it more as a trying to understand or comprehend the situation. 

It happens with your investments too.  People don’t hear any bad news and presume their investments have done just fine. They hear something negative on the news and jump to the conclusion that their investments are directly impacted. Sometimes these things are true and correct and sometimes they aren’t. In addition, as we push through these first few months of the year, pundits everywhere are making predictions on what they anticipate will happen over the next 11 months. The truth is that no one knows because no one can predict the future.  Even my son will tease me when I try to relay the weather forecast (See my Extra Mile Blog from December 2024). If I tell him it is supposed to get colder and snow, he will tell me, “You don’t know that. It might get warmer. You can’t predict the future.”  He’s right.

We are here to help weed out what is or isn’t impactful as it relates to your specific situation. We help you with your financial and retirement planning as well as managing your investments.  We are not here to predict the future, we are here to help you plan for your future.