Meaningful Returns

I wrote awhile back about my ten-year gap between doctor visits (I have since been to the doctor, thank you). But you know, going to the doctor for a checkup gets increasingly less useful the further you get past that visit. You got a clean bill of health when you went three months ago? Awesome! You got a clean bill of health when you went a year ago? Good! You got a clean bill of health when you went five years ago? Eh. You got a clean bill of health when you went ten years ago? Yikes.

This is intuitive, right? I mean, as the time between the last checkup and the present increases, the “clean bill of health” becomes increasingly worthless. Because over time our bodies age, and the way they age is heavily dependent on our own choices, but also heavily dependent on things outside of our control altogether: genetics, accidents, variety of choices available to us to begin with, etc.

The same dynamics are at play in the financial services industry. Good advice by definition becomes less good the longer it sits there, because people change, their priorities change, their families change, the world changes, and their money changes. The problem is that this isn’t immediately obvious to most people paying for the advice, and many advisors don’t necessarily do a great job of educating their clients of this fact.

So get advice from a qualified professional, but just remember that the whole point of good advice is to prepare for and respond to change over time, not just to say where things stand at this point in time.