How Focusing on What's Within Your Control Can Increase Your Chances of Financial Success
LESSONS FROM SPORT
Sports coaches will often talk about trying to “control the controllables” in their quest for victory.
Physical strength, technical expertise, tactical awareness and psychological robustness are constantly practiced and developed in training to create success on the field.
You can’t control the weather, the spectators, or a referee having a bad day, but there is still plenty that you can do to increase your chances of success.
There are many parallels with personal finance.
YOU CAN'T CONTROL THE SYSTEM
Recessions will come and go. Stock markets will rise and fall. Rules and regulations will change. Taxes will become more complicated. Power will change hands in Westminster.
Apart from voting in elections, you can’t do much about it. It's easy to worry about though, isn’t it, particularly as the media preys on our primal fears on a daily basis.
But we’ve all got limited resources of time and mental energy. Everything in life is a trade-off, so if we’re worrying about what may or may not happen in the Budget or trying to second-guess the possible impact on our portfolio of a future political event, this is taking our focus away from something more controllable.
THE GOOD NEWS IS YOU ARE STILL MASTER OF YOUR OWN FATE
There is plenty of action that you can take.
You control how you invest, how much risk you take, how well diversified your portfolio is.
And you control your expenditure, your investment costs and how tax-efficient your portfolio is.
You can learn to become more aware of your emotions and behaviour around money, your fear and greed for example, and put systems in place to try to invest logically and dispassionately, to improve your chances of success.
And you can control how complex or simple you want your finances to be, how organised your paperwork is and how much or how little time you want to spend on it all.
These are conscious decisions, all of which will increase your chances of success, whatever success looks like to you.
RELAXED IN THE PRESENT, CONFIDENT ABOUT THE FUTURE
In a busy and sometimes overwhelming world, if you can take action on what is within your control, whilst recognising that some things never will be, you’ll be more relaxed in the present and more confident about the future.
You’ll free up more time, more energy and more money to spend on whatever is most important to you and your family.
To read more about common-sense investment strategies, please click here.
The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less
than you invested.
Tax and Estate planning is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
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