You Only Have What You Have!
Maybe it's just "how you have to play the game" but it has long struck me that investment initiatives spend a lot of time mired down in assumptions that don't necessarily hold water.
I'm not just talking about crypto here, but many different things.
"Our new XYZ Fund offers a higher rate of blah-blah-blah, don't miss out on this one!"
Sounds great, but just two months ago, you were hawking the "ABC Fund" as the greatest thing since sliced bread... and now you're saying the same thing about this new one?
Don't misunderstand: I'm perfectly well aware that continuous hype is typically the backbone of trying to get customers (and potential customers) to stay excited about an organization and its offerings. I get that.
However — at least from my perspective — there's a fundamental fallacy that people magically have virtually endless amounts of "lazy cash" sitting around to pump into new ventures.
For what is likely the vast majority — who live the day-to-day lives of 60-hour work weeks and wondering whether they'll be able to pay their health insurance premiums this month — there is no "in addition to" when it comes to investment offerings, only an "instead of."
Which is where we can often find the dark and skecthy underpinnings of many investment offerings.
While they might be totally viable offerings — on the surface — the issuing investment organization is is often counting as much on transfer fees, early withdrawal penalty fees, wide price spreads and other hidden costs to make their profits, as they are counting on actually making good investments.
I remember back in my own early days of legacy investing, there were many "financial advisors" and brokers who might well be offering sound advice, but who also followed a strategy of keeping their clients "churning" through investment assets, mostly with the objective of generating fees rather than generating returns.
I call it "sketchy" because you can typically look at the "headline rate of return" on a group of investments and see that they did quite well — outperformed the market, even — but when you look at your effective rate of return, you ended up earning significantly less, simply because of the cost of frequent buying/selling and hidden fees.
Again, I'm not directly accusing the investment brokers/makers of directly trying to scam their clients, just saying that they are often tragically out-of-touch with how most people's financial lives actually function.
In some ways, I actually have a lot of respect for a number of investment organizations (from whom I often get prospectuses in the mail) that quite openly state things like "If you have a portfolio of $1,000,000 or more, we'd like to hear from you!"
In other words, unless $100K is "chump change" to you, don't even call us!
But — to bring the bunny back around — we ultimately only "have what we have" and it is super important to balance our FOMO against the reality of our daily lives!
Referring back to the previous example: If "ABC Fund" was truly the best thing ever when you invested, chances are you have no business selling it to buy into "XYZ Fund"... or whatever latest and very shiny crypto offering is being tossed your way!
While this is NOT the proverbial investment advice, and should not be interpreted as such, it IS an invitation to stop and exercise a little common sense before you chase after the next shiny object that crosses your path!
Don't take anyone's word for it... Do Your Own Research!
Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!
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Created at 2026.01.23 23:58 PST
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Our budget has always been tight, since we lived on a single income and I was home schooling our children and paying for their books and materials. People would talk about "spare change" and I always have thought, "what's that?" Now we are retired and on a fixed income. Even though it is more than what some folks live on, I still don't know what "spare change" is.
I hear you!
We haven't had "spare change" since before the kids went to college, and that was almost 20 years ago... and even then building any sort of balance was a challenge, and only effective till life threw the next disaster at us.
These days it just gets tighter and tighter, and my wife's meager "cost of living adjustments" to her SSI vs. actual inflation is not a pretty picture!