Not long ago, I ordered something online and found myself checking the tracking page way more often than necessary. The package wasn’t late, nothing had gone wrong, and from what I could tell, everything was moving exactly as planned, yet every few hours I’d still pull up the app, watching that little truck icon crawl across the map, just to see how close it was: ready for shipping, departed facility, arrived at facility, departed facility again, out for delivery.
I almost felt like my package would arrive faster if I stared at the map long enough.
Now, I fully understand that every time I clicked “refresh” a team of highly trained logistics professionals did not suddenly pool together, rally up all their efforts and resources and kick it into high gear just to work harder on my behalf.
But every time I checked, I felt like I was helping.. or at least contributing to the outcome for one brief, completely imaginary moment. In reality, the delivery truck wasn’t hitting the gas because I checked the tracking page again, but it’s easy to get carried away “watching the water boil”, even if you know deep-down it isn’t really doing anything. I just wanted that comfort, to know where it was or how long it would take to get to me; even if it was still a few days away, or a few hours, I was desperate for that confirmation, and hated not knowing.
The funny thing about uncertainty is that it can convince us we’re taking control when we’re really just looking for reassurance.
Watching my retirement account value fluctuate daily can create a similar experience. When life is busy and things feel normal, most people don’t spend much time thinking about daily market movements. Work needs attention. Family needs attention. The house needs attention. Real life has a way of keeping financial headlines in their proper place.
Then the market gets rocky, and suddenly every headline feels important, every prediction feels urgent, and every market update feels like something we should probably know. It’s easy to believe that if we just gather enough information, read one more article, watch one more interview, or check our accounts one more time, maybe then we’ll feel certain again. But certainty has a way of staying just out of reach.
The strange thing is that market volatility itself often isn’t what rattles people most. A market decline is visible; you can see it. Uncertainty is harder to pin down because it’s the feeling that maybe you’re missing out on something, that everybody else knows something you don’t, or that you should be doing something that you aren’t.
I think it’s interesting that some of the most stressful financial moments aren’t even necessarily the ones with the worst outcomes. They’re often just the ones where nobody knows what happens next. That can be true in investing, business, and other areas of life too, because most of us probably handle “bad news” better than unanswered questions. At least with bad news, you have a starting place for a plan, but with unanswered questions, you have to try to plan for an unlimited number of outcomes.
And one challenge is that long-term financial decisions rarely provide immediate answers. A retirement plan, an investment strategy, a savings goal – these things tend to reveal whether they were wise over a span of years, not days. Meanwhile, the market offers a fresh emotional reaction every few hours if we’re willing to keep looking for one… just by hitting “refresh”. That’s a difficult combination for those who are investing, or saving for their retirement: one part of the process moves slowly, while the other part never stops moving.
I’ve become increasingly convinced that confidence has less to do with predicting the future, and more to do with understanding your purpose. When you know what your money is meant to accomplish, every market movement doesn’t feel like a verdict. It’s just information
Over time though, I’ve become increasingly convinced that confidence has less to do with predicting the future, and more to do with understanding your purpose. When you know what your money is meant to accomplish, every market movement doesn’t feel like a verdict. It’s just information, some of it useful, some of it noise, and most of it temporary.
That doesn’t mean we should ignore what’s happening around us though. It simply means remembering the questions that matter most. What is this money actually for? When will I need it? Has anything meaningful changed, or am I simply uncomfortable with not knowing what comes next. Those aren’t exciting questions. They’re usually not the questions dominating financial television or market commentary, but they’re often the questions that lead to the best decisions.
Markets will continue doing what markets have always done. They will surprise us, they will test our patience, and they will occasionally make us wonder whether we should be paying closer attention than we already are.
But the goal was never to completely eliminate uncertainty, because you can’t. The goal is learning how to live wisely amidst the uncertainty that exists, without demanding certainty that was never available to begin with.
And honestly, that’s one of the reasons people seek guidance in the first place: not because an adviser can predict the future (because nobody can), and not because checking your accounts less or more frequently somehow changes what the market is doing (because it doesn’t), but because there is value in having someone help you distinguish between information and action. Between what deserves your attention, and what is merely just demanding it from you.
Something else I’ve noticed, from working alongside our advisers, is how capable and steady this team really is, especially when clients are facing changing markets, major life transitions, and all the uncertainty that naturally comes with both. I get to see the care, experience, and thoughtfulness our advisers bring to those conversations, day in and day out. They can’t make uncertainty disappear, force the market to cooperate, or even make your packages arrive any faster, but they can help provide perspective and clarity when uncertainty starts demanding more attention than it deserves.
Because, while uncertainty may be impossible to avoid, carrying every financial worry by yourself is not required.
