Everyone has met someone who had a friend who “made a fortune on XYZ stock on a hot tip”, but much like expecting to win the lottery, expecting to cash in on a hot tip probably won’t happen for you, me, or even someone you know.
Seemingly everything we do in today’s world is at a fast pace. Innovative ideas tend to offer us a way to save time or accomplish a task faster than before. This mindset can really hinder your retirement planning progress if you do not have patience.
The process of building your wealth is often referred to as wealth accumulation. Accumulation has a couple of definitions:
- The first is the acquisition or gradual gathering of something.
- Gradual: taking place or progressing slowly
- The second is to increase or grow by addition especially when continuous or repeated.
Do you see a pattern forming? Wealth accumulation takes a long time, with consistent behavior over that long period, and is not expected to be quick.
There will be years that the market takes four steps back, followed by numerous years of nine steps forward, with a historical average of more forward steps than back.
Patience in investing calls for riding out market volatility and moving past the idea you want to invest in things short-term.
Consistency in investing is more important than market timing (which is not possible).
Some tactics to help you navigate the trying times in the market is to focus on milestones along your investing journey. Some milestones to celebrate when you have been investing for a year straight the same amount each month, or reaching $25,000 in your account for the first time!
Adjusting your investments and strategies is necessary in wealth accumulation and will take place many times throughout your wealth accumulation stage (even in retirement sometimes).
If you’re struggling with patience in investing, reach out to Masters Financial Group so we can help to ease your nerves!