Last Saturday, on the way home from running our errands, I said to my girlfriend "Let's go check and see if they've moved the Murillo building yet." This has been big news here in Des Moines for several weeks now. A major health insurance carrier is wanting to build new headquarters downtown and there are a lot of small properties in the three block area where they want to build. Among them were two historic buildings over 100 years old. One was a rowhouse built in 1880. It was the sole survivor of 8 original rowhouses. The other was a three-story, six-unit brick apartment building built in 1903. The insurance company agreed to donate the building if someone would move it. It would be the biggest structure ever moved in Iowa. Local news crews as well as the Discovery Channel and National Geographic were on hand to film it.
Well. We arrived at around 2:00 in the afternoon and, when we left around 3:30, the building had moved a little more than half a block. You had to watch closely to even see it move. A lot of the preparation had already been done like lowering power lines, trimming trees, lowering street lights, and of course the hundreds of man hours just to get the building ready for it's 4-block trip. However, from time to time, they'd bring someone in to trim a tree branch that was in the way or take down a traffic sign. But then the building would start to move again.
It's sort of like planning for your financial future. First, you have to know where you are now, where you want to go, and have a plan in place to get there. Then, you need to work with someone who has the tools and the knowledge to handle the little things that get in your way from time to time. Financial planning is a journey, not a destination.
Fear and greed are the two most common reasons why people make decisions but, it may be smarter to trust your plan when it comes to your money. Every year the Dalbar Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior shows how individual investors have fared in comparison to overall market returns. The 2007 report covered the twenty-year period from the beginning of 1987 thru the end of 2006. During that time, the average investor earned only 4.3% annually while the overall market return averaged 11.8%. Why? Well, greed motivates them to dump money into things that are already doing well but, then when those investments experience a temporary setback, fear makes them sell off their position when there may not be anything fundamentally wrong.
So, if you have a plan, make sure that, before you make any big changes, you are reviewing the plan overall and not just reacting to temporary setbacks. It requires patience and it is a little like watching paint dry. Now, you've probably never watched paint dry. You know that you can paint and be confident that it will dry. You may check in on it from time to time but you don't grab a towel and wipe it off and switch to wallpaper just because it's a little humid outside.
Did you know that only $13 of every $100 spent at a big-box retailer stays in the local economy while $45
of every $100 spent at a local merchant stays local?
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