I’m a fool for doing this, but I do read some comments on Facebook posts. I saw a rather touching one recently, where a young woman noted, “When you have kids, they’re your everything”. Boy, do I know what she means. In my uber-Mommy phase, I went so far as to wear a corduroy jumper appliquéd with a teddy bear carrying a Christmas tree, just because it would delight my then-little daughter. Luckily there are no pictures.
Over time, I’ve also heard people declare their spouse, lover, job, and pets to be “everything”. Then there are the magic bullets we are asked to believe in: the right eating program (vegan, low carb, low fat, clean eating, snore…), the cure for allergies, the perfect drug, the cure for pain—cancer—aging… Or the magic investment program that will make you a trillionaire without risk or worry or much effort on your part…gold, market timing, 1000s of methods of stock selection, buy and hold.
None of this is right or true.
Being the omniscient person that I am, I actually have the right method: diversify!
Let’s go with the personal, first. People who make kids, or a spouse, or any other person their everything tend to lose, not only that person, but just about everything else. So in the event of a divorce, or death, or just the time of life when they need to get their claws out of the other individual, they find they have nothing left. My mom was my dad’s everything for more than 50 years; he disintegrated after her death. Kids grow up and you’re stuck with the spouse you used to have. Or you find yourself at 50, with no career, no wardrobe, out of date competencies, and a divorce. Sure, you love being with that adorable toddler, but make yourself get out without them. By 12 or 13, they won’t want to be your everything. I used to have a sign on my bedroom door:
Are you bleeding? Is the house on fire? Then, don’t knock.
Worked great with my kid. Not so much with the ex, which is at least one of the dozens of reasons he’s an ex. And BTW, for heaven’s sake stop using your kid, dog, or cat as your FB profile picture. Your own identity will always be important.
All the magical bullet medicine is just one of the reasons I support universal healthcare. Hardly a day passes without some miracle nutritional scheme or magic cure on my Facebook feed. The years since the discovery of penicillin and polio vaccines have made us all worship at the magic pill church—that there’s an easy cure for everything if we just swallow the (highly profitable to pharma and biotech companies) right pill or program of eating. Universal health care might put some restraints and cost controls on medipharma’s tendency to nuke everything, and if one bomb doesn’t work, 7 or 8 will be better. I’m way more worried about getting too much intervention than not enough.
Hearteningly, I am also beginning to see articles cautioning how over-medicated, endocrine disrupted, and un-resistant to bugs our bodies have become. Michael Pollan has offered us probably the most sensible advice: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. No mention of juice cleanses or meal kits. Simple diversification.
And finally we get to my corner of expertise—investments. Scratch any two investment managers and you’ll find three opinions on what the correct investments are. What is the best allocation, the best asset classes, the best tax home? Does all this matter? Sure, that’s what we get paid for, and a good allocation can make a difference, a small difference but spendable in a big enough portfolio. But I’m here to declare something radical: the biggest difference is selecting a decent diversification and sticking with it.
That can be a target date fund. Seriously. I have some real problems and reservations about them, but it’s way better than putting all your money in the S&P 500 fund—which is still better than picking a stock or two that you’re sure is hot—or the so-called stable value fund. A target date fund gives you some diversity.
But should you put 50% of your stock allocation in U.S. and 50% in international? 2/3 US, 1/3 international? 10 funds instead of 12? In the big scheme of things, I can fiddle with allocation projections to give you just about any result you want, given your risk tolerance. But the best answer is—it doesn’t matter nearly as much as long as you diversify.
Accumulate something you haven’t spent on meal kits and Tofurky, then pick an easy, diversified fund. Once you get into 6 figures, you can start to benefit from selecting your own allocation—the small difference in specific allocations will start to be visible. And even though it’s heresy to many financial planners who salute the flag of mutual funds, I don’t think you’ll necessarily end up in a trailer by the river if you buy a few individual stocks. But don’t make those your everything, either.
Caveat: no specific investment advice is intended. Your individual investments should be selected based on your goals, risk tolerance, and other individual factors.