Focus on the route plan rather than the fuel

The media tells bombards us with information about what is happening the world that makes us feel that we need to react to every single event.

Our minds are also programmed to think in the short term. This stems back to the days of hunter gatherers where existence and survival was taken on a day to day basis. Therefore you might be forgiven for also thinking in the short term when it comes to all aspects of life including your finances.

However, when it comes to your finances that there is a need to take a long term view. The capital that you have/are building needs to be sufficient for throughout your lifetime.

To use a comparison in every day life, when taking a (potentially) long car journey, people are most interested in the route and being guided by the sat nav rather than whether the fuel/battery that you have within the car is being as efficient as possible.

So bringing it back to finance you should focus more on the financial plan/forecast and that being correct for your circumstances, rather than whether the products that you have are performing 100% optimally at all times (although that is clearly what we aim for).

Whilst it is important to ensure that you have sufficient fuel for your journey (in the form of assets), being too concerned about maximum efficiency is less important, because if you take the wrong route you could end up in completely the wrong destination!

Now each journey is likely to be different and so may require different routes, levels of fuel or types of vehicle, but the principle remains the same.

Now you may be thinking that there are times when you think that you know better than the plan and get tempted to you ignore it whilst stuck in traffic, but more often than not it turns out be worse than just sticking it out (speaking from experience unfortunately). The same principle applies to your finances.

 So when it comes to your finances, think more about the route plan (financial plan) than the fuel (products)!