MICHELLE SMALENBERGER, CFA ®

This summer our daughter started swimming lessons outside again and we were reminded of the progress she had made the year before.  The first week into her second year we noticed it was a little bit tough and she was starting to doubt herself. We just realized that sometimes you make progress and then take a step back before leaping forward to more progress again.  Let’s help to compare this to your financial goals so you don’t grow frustrated or discouraged either.

It’s very infrequent that you deposit funds and your investment just moves straight up, never experiencing any volatility.  Realistically your investments fluctuate over time, while moving higher in value over the long-term. One day your account may have $100,000, the next week $96,000 and then you start to see the account value consistently over $100,000 moving even higher.

So back to our analogy with our daughter’s swimming lessons as she’s making progress.  We can see that she’s making progress and then we notice times where she has to struggle through to gain confidence and realize that she can swim.  There are little skills she can refine to ultimately make leaps forward in her swimming because she figured out how to overcome the areas where she was weak.

This stepping back to move forward is common in many areas of life.  So don’t get frustrated! Just keep pushing forward in those things you know you need to do so you can see your progress over time.