I feel I am becoming a crabby old man at the tender age of twenty-six. More and more, as I look at the world around me, I see things that annoy, aggravate, or just plain bother me. I don’t think I’m hopeless yet; I haven’t taken to yelling out the window at neighborhood kids to keep off my grass, or started to rant about the noise these kids listen to nowadays (although, I do refuse to listen to much of popular music). I’m hopeful that I’ll avoid becoming too grumpy in the future, although as it stands, I’ll be ready for a remake of Snow White in the near future (assuming they don’t have a problem with a 6′1″ Grumpy).
Still, I like to think that many, if not most of my pet peeves are understandable, even if not completely justified. So, with no further ado, here are a few of the things that bother me about life (and keeping with the theme of this blog, I’ll try to include a few financial ones for flavor):
Being Passed on the Right: One thing that I simply hate is when I am passed on the right side of my car. Usually, it happens when I’m in the passing lane, trying to pass someone and get far enough ahead to safely pull back over to the right, when someone in too much of a hurry to drive safely passes the car I just passed, zips over to the right lane (maybe signaling, frequently not) and rushes by me. I don’t know why exactly this annoys me more than other examples of unsafe driving (and goodness knows, you can find enough to fill a text book if you spend any amount of time on the road), but it does. Seriously, unless you’re an ambulance or a fire truck, it’s all but certain that you can wait long enough for the car in the left lane to pull over.
The Financial Media’s Obsession with Fluctuating Stock Prices: Do me a favor. Go to your television, turn on CNBC, and take a look at their screen. Or, if you don’t want to do that, look at this example screenshot below:
CNBC, in all its glory
Besides the sheer overwhelming nature of all the information being displayed (a pet peeve for another day), notice the crawl down on the bottom of the screen. You have not one, but two crawls showing the current prices of various stocks, updated throughout the day. And if that’s not enough, you can go to CNBC’s website and find even more stock prices, updated in real time.
All this focus on the minute by minute stock fluctuations only encourages a day trader mentality in investors who lack the time, patience, or excess money to try to profit from the daily ebb and surge of stock prices. I realize that financial media outlets need to fill time, and that such information grabs attention (and thus ratings and sponsor dollars) for the broadcaster. It would just be nice to see some alternatives, a channel (or even the occasional program or two) that encourages long term investing, dollar cost averaging, and a diverse, passively managed portfolio.
Talk of Investing as ‘Too Risky’: This one is particularly annoying. Yes, by investing, you do put part of your money at risk, for the hope of an uncertain return (unless you are putting your money in an investment with virtually no chance of declining in value, like a savings account or a Treasury note; but these are really saving, in my book). And yes, there is the chance that you could lose some, or even all of your money by doing so. But these risks can be alleviated by diversification and smart asset allocation; the risks of not investing, such as finding your nest egg is too small to support your retirement, or that your money’s spending power has been eaten away by inflation, cannot. If you hope to retire and don’t have a pension (and either don’t trust Social Security or expect it to pay out far less by the time you retire), there’s really no alternative to investing for future, other than working until you drop, literally.
So there you have it, several of my pet peeves. It’s just a start; I could probably make this into an entire week if you really got me going. But, now I’m curious: what are some of your pet peeves out there in watcher land? Feel free to leave a note and let me know!
Related Websites
Leave a comment