Photo Credit: Alon

There is always a reason to worry, and always enough time to panic.

Look over there, behind that bush: interest rates are rising. In Europe and China, deflation is threatening. The geopolitical situation is in many ways tense over Russia, and Middle East issues. Japan is a mess. Emerging markets will get hit when the Fed starts to tighten.

I could go on, and talk about the longer term demographic problems that we face, and other aspects of lousy government policy, but it would get too long. The point is, there are things that you can worry about. But what should you do?

For many people, worry paralyzes. If there are significant potential problems, they won’t invest, or they will keep their investments very simple and safe. They may fall prey to those who scam by offering “safety” though gold, guns, food storage, life insurance products, etc. Is there a better way to avoid worry?

The first way to avoid worry is to realize that more things can go wrong than do go wrong. Many of the things you might worry about will not happen. Second, even when things do go wrong, the market prices often reflect those possibilities, so the markets may not react badly. Third, the markets have endured many crises in the past and have come back from those crises. Fourth, in the worst crises you can imagine, it will not matter what you do if those take place — you will lose a lot, but so will everyone else. If no strategy can work in the worst problems, you should spend your time praying rather than worrying.

Some might say to me, “But I don’t want to lose a lot of money! I’m relying on it for my retirement (or whatever).” If that is your problem, the answer is simple — invest less in risk assets. Give up some potential return so that you can sleep at night. That has been my advice to a bunch of pastors who generally don’t understand the markets at all. We offer them blended portfolios of risky and safe assets ranging from low volatility to the volatility level of the stock market. I tell them to look at what the blended portfolios have lost in 2008, and size the risk of their holdings to what they can live with in terms of risk if they had to liquidate at a bad time. If they are still squeamish, I tell them to take the risk level down another notch.

There is a risk to not taking enough risk, and that will be the point of part 2, but it is better for the squeamish to implement a sub-optimal plan than no plan. It is also better for the squeamish to implement a sub-optimal plan than a plan that they can’t maintain, because they get too scared.

Solutions have to be real-world to meet people where they are. After that, maybe we can try to teach people not to worry, but human nature is difficult to change.

PS — for any that might say that they are worried that they aren’t going to earn enough to be able to retire or stay comfortably retired, part 2 will have something to say there as well.