Finance Focus on what you can control... First things first: if you’re looking to gain more confidence about your finances, you need to understand what’s within your control and what’s not. And therein lies the core irony of managing our money: even though we spend a lot of time thinking about and planning how to manage our finances, at the end of the day, a lot of what we have to deal with remains outside of our control. The stock market, for example. Or interest rates. Inflation. The broader economy. Changes in tax law. Any one of these things may well keep us up at night, and erode the confidence that we may have in our financial situation. But when it comes right down to it, we have very limited ability to change any of them. That said, we do have the power to change howwe’re exposed to many of these issues. So, while we can’t control what the stock market is doing at the moment, we can absolutely control how much we’re exposed to the high-risk, high-return speculations which tend to suffer most in a downturn. We have no power over how inflation might eat away at our spending power – but we can try to control our spending, to limit the pain of higher prices. Short of running for prime minister, we can’t really change what the federal government might do to the tax laws in the years to come. But we can absolutely meet with a veteran accountant or tax lawyer andmake sure that we’re saving the most we can on our taxes in the here and now. Truth be told, most of the issues that are out of our control have these adjacent, or “next door” actions that are within our control. Focusing on these practical, tangible actions does require a bit of a mental shift in the way we think about money. But it can make a big difference to how confident we feel about things. ...while broadening your perspective on what you can’t Now, this is not to say that we should simply ignore what’s outside of our control. Rather, what we need to do is to gain some perspective on these things. Doing so can actually strengthen our confidence about financial events, market moves and the overall economic environment. The next time you’re feeling a little anxious about the stock market, interest rates, inflation, tax laws or any other financial or economic topic that’s a little too “big” for you to change, take a look at the past. Do a quick internet search on stock market fluctuations throughout history – how deep they go, how long they last and what happens when they’re over. How did investors deal with rising interest rates? How did consumers adapt to rising inflation? Try to remember. No, learning more about financial history isn’t the most exciting thing to do (sure, we’d all rather be golfing, or enjoying time at the cottage, or visiting a foreign country, or meeting with family). But it can be a vitally important part of shifting your perspective on financial events – and helping you realize that whatever crisis du jour the world is going through, it too will pass. And that can have a powerful impact on your sense of financial confidence. CSANews | FALL 2022 | 31
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