Burned out with all things financial...

[crs1]

I registered some time ago. I never thought this would be my 1st post. But I am truely burned out with financial planning, strategy, investing, and anything related to such. Anyone else experience this prior to retirement? I think I will take a break from it all and let the chips fall where they may. I really don't care much anymore.

I don't market time, I have a set AA, I invest regularly, all in indexes. I believe in how I invest and I do it all myself including tax filing. I'm just tired of it all. It can be life consuming and shouldn't be that way I don't think. Anyone else?

 

[REWahoo]

If you have a "set AA", you shouldn't have to look at it more than once a year to stay on track. How can that be tiring?

 

[easysurfer]

When I used to w*rk, the activities of keeping track of my investments, planning, learning strategies gave me comfort. It felt like my "get out of jail free card" to pave the way to FIRE.

 

[toofrugalformycat]

I registered some time ago. I never thought this would be my 1st post. But I am truely burned out with financial planning, strategy, investing, and anything related to such. Anyone else experience this prior to retirement? I think I will take a break from it all and let the chips fall where they may. I really don't care much anymore.

I don't market time, I have a set AA, I invest regularly, all in indexes. I believe in how I invest and I do it all myself including tax filing. I'm just tired of it all. It can be life consuming and shouldn't be that way I don't think. Anyone else?

Have you considered setting up automatic purchases, dollar-cost-averaging into your indexes? There's an infinite amount of things to research, read and study about investing, but that's true about most aspects of life, and you are in control of how you allocate your time.

It's less fun when the market is falling and you feel dumb, more fun when the market is rising and you feel smart. That's going to be true both before and after retirement. John D. MacDonald, the novelist, put that in a lot of his novels, about the real-life boom and bust of real estate in Florida.

 

[Surewhitey]

I still enjoy it...just a numbers geek that way. I look at it like Monopoly for grown ups. If I have Boardwalk & Park Place with a couple homes on them, I'm happy.

Don't get me wrong, I still find time to walk down to the beach a few times a week...

 

[unclemick]

I registered some time ago. I never thought this would be my 1st post. But I am truely burned out with financial planning, strategy, investing, and anything related to such. Anyone else experience this prior to retirement? I think I will take a break from it all and let the chips fall where they may. I really don't care much anymore.

I don't market time, I have a set AA, I invest regularly, all in indexes. I believe in how I invest and I do it all myself including tax filing. I'm just tired of it all. It can be life consuming and shouldn't be that way I don't think. Anyone else?

Perhaps it should be the way you think.



Hindsight being what it is - my active planning, investing, thinking, reading, and all that other foolish stuff provided maybe 10% of my retirement.

The part I didn't look at - max deduct 401k to trad. IRA(before Roth) into Bogle's Folly aka 500 index provided 90% of my portfolio.

Done properly - investment is one of the few areas where the less you do the more you make.

heh heh heh - I did have this hormone problem - young male and a irresistable urge to pick a few good stocks but age lessens the effects of the disease.

 

[Nords]

I don't market time, I have a set AA, I invest regularly, all in indexes. I believe in how I invest and I do it all myself including tax filing. I'm just tired of it all. It can be life consuming and shouldn't be that way I don't think. Anyone else?

Sounds like you're doing enough to get 95% of what you want.

You have to be hard-wired to put out an additional 100% effort to raise your returns by a fraction of a percent.

Our college daughter is plenty busy with school & life, and more focused on controlling her expenses to save as much as she can. Beyond that she doesn't give a rat's ass about asset allocation, volatility, or tax efficiency. Like UncleMick says, perhaps she has a better attitude than me. But then she doesn't find McMillan's options-trading textbook as fascinating as I do.

As my ER goes on (9+ years now) I trade less often. I'm more interested in finding investments that don't require a sustained daily effort.

For the second year in a row, I'm going to end up doing three sets of tax returns-- my father's, mine, and my daughter's. (Although she does the data entry.) That's getting old real fast.

 

[bbbamI]

I'm just tired of it all. It can be life consuming and shouldn't be that way I don't think. Anyone else?

Yes. A couple of years before DH retired, I nearly drove myself freakin' nutz...I felt like I was running around in circles.

Finally it all boiled down to...

Keeping track of expenses.....one hour per week
Finding an AA (like you) that made me feel comfortable
Updating my financial spreadsheet at the end of each month

...and accepted there are some things that are out of my control.

 

[obgyn65]

My words exactly. I have always had the same AA all my life. The rest is automatic, except the annual trip to HR Block for taxes. Not tiring at all - and I rather enjoy updating my spreadsheet once a month or so.

If you have a "set AA", you shouldn't have to look at it more than once a year to stay on track. How can that be tiring?

 

[Beryl]

Me too. Each month, I update my workbook, save it under a new name, and hope my new outlook is better than it was in previous months. It doesn't tire me at all. It might be because I wasn't consumed with it when I was w*rking.

 

[kz]

I definitely became burned out by all things financial some years ago. Lots of reasons for this but mostly the fact that I handle all the financial decisions in our household. No matter how much I try to get hubby involved he just doesn't care. (good news is he thinks I've done a really good job all these years) When I informed him that I was stressed out over everything financial he looked at me and said "Do we spend more each month than we have coming in?" And then he just had to add, "Do we manage to put a good percentage of our income in savings/investments each month?" Of course I had to answer no to the first question and yes to the second. I think it struck me at that moment that I needed to just lighten up and have some fun. Well we certainly are having fun and, lo and behold, he took a little more interest in finances. Funny how those things work!

 

[pb4uski]

Sounds like you have things well thought out and are in the mainstream of what many of us do. Why don't you take a month or two "off" to clear your head?

Take that time and focus more on health or relationships or one of your hobbies and less on finances.

 

[Chuckanut]

It should not be that hard.

 

[Animorph]

I registered some time ago. I never thought this would be my 1st post. But I am truely burned out with financial planning, strategy, investing, and anything related to such. Anyone else experience this prior to retirement? I think I will take a break from it all and let the chips fall where they may. I really don't care much anymore.

I don't market time, I have a set AA, I invest regularly, all in indexes. I believe in how I invest and I do it all myself including tax filing. I'm just tired of it all. It can be life consuming and shouldn't be that way I don't think. Anyone else?

No reason you have to obsess over it constantly. Just like the "turn off the TV investment news", you may prefer to turn us off as well. Check in again with your portfolio when you are closer to your goal and feel like refining your FI estimates.

 

[steelyman]

I believe in how I invest and I do it all myself including tax filing. I'm just tired of it all. It can be life consuming and shouldn't be that way I don't think. Anyone else?

I wouldn't say that I'm "burned out" on financial things, but I notice that, even being just a few months into ER, I don't watch things like a hawk in the way I did while still working. We all lived through 2008-9 and hopefully have no lasting scars except the memory of that crazy time. I think your attitude is healthy!

 

[easysurfer]

What keeps me from feeling burned out is making sure that I'm organized. Sounds simple, in many ways, organization is more than half the battle. Then it's just a matter of filling in the blanks. It's like multiple choice vs essay back in college days.

For example, for taxes, I have a folder with differrent sections (income, deductions, donations, etc.). As the year goes by, I anytime I come across something which applies, simply tuck that document in the proper section. The same is true with keeping track of my HSA (different sections in a filing cabinet for expenses paid by me vs already reimbursed, etc.).

I was talking to a brother about taxes the other day. His DW isn't organized, worked several jobs throughout the past year, is starting her own business. I said to him, "So when tax time comes, you'll be frantically looking for paperwork?" He say, "Yeah, guess so."

 

[ESRwannabe]

I've never felt burned out from reading about investing. I have sometimes felt that I should not follow it so much as it sometimes stresses me out.

What stresses me out sometimes is when I try to predict the future in order to know where I should be putting my money. Its pointless to even try, but when I read about current events I usually can't help myself from thinking about it.

I'm really quite happy with my investing strategy.

 

[kaneohe]

Perhaps it would useful to list the tasks, activities,etc that are taking up so much time.............well, I gues you didn't mention taking time but more burning you out. If you have a philosophy/strategy and a plan, why doesn't it basically run
on autopilot.

 

[Helen]

Yes, I burned out. I didn't do any financial planning at all in 2011. I will need to in 2012 as I received an inheritence a little over a year ago, as did my partner. I need to come up with a plan to sell/convert assets (there are a lot of individual stocks) then begin to implement the plan.

We have accounts with both Vanguard and Fidelity. I should pick one and move the other account over. I'm thinking Fidelity may win.

I also think I will go with basic index funds, like 3 of them, and a MMF. I just want to keep it simple.

I have really been enjoying my time away from personal finance and am rather dreading turning my attention back to it.

 

[NW-Bound]

I don't market time, I have a set AA, I invest regularly, all in indexes. I believe in how I invest and I do it all myself including tax filing. I'm just tired of it all. It can be life consuming and shouldn't be that way I don't think. Anyone else?

Well, then why is it tiring?

Even now that I work part-time, I never do much financial planning other than making sure that we do not spend too much beyond what I bring in. And when I quit working eventually, I will be sure I will not spend more than, say, 3% of portfolio. Do I need to do more than that?

About investing, yes, I try to market time by guessing where the world economy is heading, trying to move around from hot sectors to cold ones. Most often, I end up not doing that much, and only move money around a bit, perhaps 20-30% of portfolio at most in a year, which is less than Wellesley's turnover at 48%. This year, my portfolio turn-over is perhaps 5-10%.

And I do not get tired, only frustrated when the world does not behave like my plan for it.

 

[Moscyn]

Crs1, if you feel burned out, take a break. I'm not sure how aggressive your investment goals are but investing should certainly not be life consuming. That is not what life (esp retirement life) is all about. Personal financial planning is part of my routine and given that I don't have an aggressive portfolio, I don't make structural changes to it often. I do trade regularly but am ok to suspend trading for a month or two if I need a break.

 

[friar1610]

I'm kinda feeling the same way although I have always been really into tracking my portfolio, keeping up with the latest on several financial web sites, etc. Over the past year I've simplified my portfolio (which consists entirely of VG mutual funds, most of them indexes, I-Bonds and CDs.) My objectives are:
- to make it simple enough for my wife (who is not into this stuff) to be able to handle/
manage if I predecease her;
-make it so simple I won't need to/want to pay as much attention to it.

One of my New Year's resolutions is not to check my Vanguard portfolio on-line as often as I used to. Specifically, no more than once a week and hopefully less than that.

I've also grown bored listening to "Marketplace Money" on NPR.

 

[megacorp-firee]

Before FIRE, I ran the numbers every which way. After starting FIRE, we kept track of every expenditure to make sure we did not have our assumptions wrong. At the end of 2010, we were satisfied we had our numbers right and stop tracking all of our 'outgo'. Now it is on autopilot (sorta). We no longer track everything, but we do keep an eye on out portfolio.

IMO you should satisfy yourself that everything is ok, then lighten up. It sounds like you are over thinking (and over stressing) this (as we all did at one time).

Hope this helps. Best of FIRE to you.

 

[crs1]

Thank you all. I somewhat worried about my posting after having done it. After all, who enters, with a first post, a financial website about financial planning and says he is burned out with financial planning? I must be nuts! I was sincere though and have a very nice opinion of this site based on all of your responses.

There are many circumstances related to my "burnout" - a substantial retirement plan rollover which required much research & jostled all of my accounts, the reinvestment of that money, the threat to my job from BRAC (I'm now employed many miles from my residence), the pressure on me to retire due to that circumstance, the threat to my family's residence from imminent domain, the threats to my retirement itself from federal budget cutting measures, etc. I was OK with all of that.

Then, the movement of money to Roth accounts struck a few days ago leaving more decisions. That was the straw I think.

I'm OK with it all, but certainly fatigued. A short break will help. Thanks again to everyone here.