How do you determine success? It’s usually a harder question to answer than one might think. At Claris, we often think about what part we play in helping our clients achieve their financial goals and objectives. The story I tell most often is that we believe when our clients come to the end of their financial journey, they will probably be more concerned with if they met their financial goals and objectives, not what their portfolio returns were. For example, would it matter if you received a 2% annualized rate of return during your entire investment lifetime, but met your goals and objectives? I’m assuming your answer would be no. If so, then why do we seem to get caught up mostly with returns when it comes to investing? That will be a question for another time with more explanation.
At Claris, It is our job to help our clients craft their investment portfolios, rebalance when appropriate and keep them disciplined to the process which relies on long-term investing patience. On one hand, it can be quite simple, but on the other it seems to be so difficult. It usually comes down to one thing that gets in our way: OUR BEHAVIOR. Keeping that in check I believe is the key to SUCCESS!
