As people seek to balance work, financial pressures and living well, one important goal frequently comes into play.
That objective, increasingly, is how individuals can best manage and reduce stress about money and how it affects their lives.
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And it is precisely that subject that TheStreet’s Conway G. Gittens recently had a chance to discuss with The Geometry of Wealth author Brian Portnoy from Gittens’ desk in a remote interview from the New York Stock Exchange floor.
TheStreet host first asked Portnoy about his best piece of advice when it comes to managing personal finances.
“So let me give you two quick answers,” Portnoy said. “The first is just to validate that this is stressful. So we’re experts in the psychology of financial planning. And suffice it to say, we have very old brains operating in new markets. So the fact that this is stress is very natural.”
“The real piece of advice I would say is and maybe this sounds very, very basic, but it’s powerful and it’s true, which is that if you have a financial plan written down, everything becomes less stressful,” he added. “The markets begin to move slower. So having a plan really matters.”
Portnoy expanded a bit on what he believes is specifically important for people to record in written form.
“So by financial plan, I mean, what are you hoping to achieve? What are your goals? What do those things cost, whether it’s a new home or retirement or helping your kids out with college or whatever the case may be?” he asked.
“But it’s hard to get somewhere if you don’t know what the destination is. And until the destination, well, then you can’t make an actual path to get there,” Portnoy continued. “So physically writing it down, preferably on a piece of paper and you know where it is and you can check in on it makes all the difference in the world.”
Portnoy has words on reducing financial stress and processing news
Gittens asked Portnoy about his thoughts on how people can overcome feeling stress about money.
“Well, again, it starts with the plan,” Portnoy said. “So having a sense of what your goals are, being relatively precise about what you want to achieve, what you need to achieve, that’s critical.”
The conversation then turned to news and other information and how people can absorb them in a healthy way.
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“Second thing is monitor your information diet,” Portnoy said. “And by that I mean that we live in a world that is absolutely overwhelmed with data choice and information.”
“There’s an old line that we’re drowning in information but starved for wisdom. So try to be very cognizant of the types of news that you’re taking in, the types of data,” he suggested. “Because if you’re trying to drink from the fire hose and learn everything, it is going to be extremely stressful when you can step back and say, ‘This piece of information is relevant to what’s on my written down plan,’ versus, ‘Hey, this is just big picture. This is noise.’ It really does make a difference in terms of your stress level.”
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Portnoy advises against comparing your finances to others
Portnoy took a moment to focus on another piece of advice with regard to financial stress.
“The third thing I’d flag is whether or not to pay attention to others,” he said. “The original J.P. Morgan, John Pierpont Morgan, said that nothing corrupts one’s financial judgment more than the sight of your neighbor getting rich.”
He added another point about how social media presents people with a big challenge on this exercise.
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“And so right now, because of social media, because of global communications, effectively everybody is our neighbor,” he said. “We’re always looking around. Those comparisons can make us incredibly stressed out. You know, we’re keeping up with the Joneses, so to speak, and so it’s hard to turn that off.”
“But we can be a little bit more self-aware, a little bit more cognizant that those dynamics are taking place.”
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