Behavior
3 viewpoints on this topic.← All viewpoints
Behavior is where most financial plans actually break — not at the math, but at the moment. The viewpoints below trace the patterns I see most often after twenty years of writing plans: anchoring on what an investment used to be worth, loss aversion that gets dressed up as prudence, score-keeping against the wrong benchmark. Each essay names the bias, explains why it's expensive, and walks through what a calmer process looks like instead.
Is loss aversion costing your portfolio more than bad picks?
The instinct to avoid losses feels like good risk management. It isn't. Here's what it's actually doing to your long-term returns.
When does "more" stop being a goal and start being a habit?
A surprising amount of investing anxiety comes from people who already won the game and never noticed. Diagnosing, and treating, the scoreboard problem in plain language.
Is anchoring bias quietly shaping your portfolio?
You're tracking the wrong number. The one you can't stop looking at is the one that's costing you money.
Behavioral mistakes don't make people foolish; they make people human. The job of a planner — and the job of these essays — is to build a process that's resilient to the predictable ways our brains misfire under uncertainty, so the plan survives the decade, not just the day it was drafted.