Just Do It!

 Off topic today, but I had some thoughts I wanted to get down on paper.

I've heard various financial "experts" over the years, repeat the adage, "Investment success doesn't result from timing the market, but from time in the market." After about three and a half decades of personal experience in my own life, I have to conclude that they are 99% certainly correct, and I only use that figure because it is possible that someone, somewhere out there is smart enough to do it, but if so, they're keeping their mouths shut. Anyone who claims to have a "system" is simply trying to sell you something.

Ok, so my wife and I have saved and invested for our future in a number of ways, but primarily through 401k contributions, as well as a couple of employee stock ownership plans. We have also purchased individual stocks and mutual funds in our brokerage account, put money in our HSAs, bought CDs (way back when yields were over 6%). I've made selection errors, and suffered high fees, especially when we followed the advice of friends who had become financial planners and sold us variable annuities. 

But despite the various errors, fees and disappointments, one thing remained constant above all...we never stopped investing. Regularly, persistently, consistently, and with a fairly high to extremely high percentage of our income. In fact, the last five years before I retired, I was putting 50% of my salary in the company 401k, and my wife was contributing 25% of hers during that time period, as well as maxing out our HSA contributions and taking advantage of all company matching.

All of this has taken place over about 35 years, half a dozen major market corrections, and other market peaks and troughs. We just never quit putting money away. Instead of spending everything we made or, like some folks, more than we made, we kept our expenses down, sacrificed some of our personal desires - though never any of our real needs - and put our money to work.

You might think that we were only able to do this because we were high-income earners. I'm sadly afraid that this has not been the case. For most of our careers our income was not significantly greater than the national average, and even in recent years, most recent college graduates have higher starting salaries than we have ever enjoyed.

When markets went up - we invested.

When markets went down - we invested.

When we got a windfall - we invested.

When things were tough - we invested.

Every paycheck. Every year.

The end result of our consistent policy of saving and investing for several decades is that we have enough money in our retirement plans and other investments to live comfortably in our old age, regardless of whether Social Security pays out or comes crashing down someday. This isn't to say that a black swan event like the collapse of the U.S. or world economy couldn't take us down, but in that situation, I think we're all going to have real problems.

I say this not to brag, or to claim credit for the blessings God has given us, but rather to encourage anyone out there who doesn't think it's possible, that the system is rigged against the little guy, or that you have to have a huge salary to be able to become wealthy. Simply follow a consistent and persistent plan of investing over the long haul, and you can reap the rewards. If you start early and young, the total results will be astounding.

Success in Racquet/Paddle Sports

 I played racquetball for about thirty years, and though I never achieved any sort of elite status, I was able to glean some thoughts about how the game should be played. One of the things I noticed when I hung out with guys who played at the pro level was that their shots - their stroke - always looked the same, backhand or forehand, flowing through a "strike zone" - there may be some parallels to baseball here as well. Rather than reach out too far and awkwardly attempt a shot when the ball was not optimally placed, they would move quickly to position their bodies so that the ball would fly right into the perfect area for their stroke, and their footwork and body position was such that the ball was pretty well certain to go in just the right direction, rather than popping off the racquet in a random direction, as my shots often did.

I'm starting to get the same feeling about the basics of pickleball. When I stop long enough to analyze the reasons why I didn't make a particular shot, it's generally because a) I didn't take the time to get into position so that the ball was well within my "strike zone" or b) didn't stop and align my feet and body to put the correct amount of power in the proper direction into the shot, or c) didn't follow through completely with a smooth motion. The only other major error-causing problem is failure to keep my paddle at the proper angle, which often is the result of trying to reach a ball outside of my strike zone.

If a ball simply arrives too quickly for me to react, then the failure on my end was more of a mental or strategic error where I failed to anticipate my opponents' most potentially deadly return. 

As is often the case, these failings are a lot easier to see in others than in myself. However, the more I see a fellow player fail, for example, to properly line up their feet and body for a shot or try to hit the ball while moving forward instead of getting into a set position, and watch the ball go flying off in an unexpected direction or sail straight into the net, the more it reinforces my conviction about the importance of these basics. 

Some of this, perhaps, is the reason you'll see so many players "walking around" a backhand and hitting a forehand shot from a disadvantageous court position. They don't have a "ready" position in their repertoire for a backhand, so they feel more comfortable taking the extra effort to move until the ball is in their forehand zone.

In the world of professional poker, there is a thing called "going on tilt". It happens to players after a series of bad beats, usually, and causes them to be so upset that they no longer play rationally, but make their bets based on emotion, especially anger. This can happen in pickleball, too. If you go through a period of time when your shots are inexplicably going astray - into the net or out of bounds - or every ball your opponent hits seems to end up exactly where it needs to be, while you struggle, it is easy to "go on tilt" and begin to play with anger or even depression. If you can avoid this emotional type of play, and simply weather the storm, you can generally come out the other side of a losing streak and begin to play well - and even win. Sometimes, if you can't seem to shake the emotional side of things off, it's best to just give it a rest and play another day.