crystal ball

When We Overcrunch the Numbers
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I was recently amused by an online debate among some financial planners. One planner was wondering how to “deal” with a client who wanted to pay off their mortgage early, given that they could invest their extra money instead.

My amusement came from observing those who believed their calculators or spreadsheets could provide a definitive answer to the question. Was it better to make larger mortgage payments or to invest more?

They seemed to confuse their analytical tools with an ability to know the future.

Most argued that the “correct” answer was to invest more rather than pay down the debt, because their tools showed greater ending wealth by doing so. To them, the spreadsheet was the truth. (Usually, they did did at least concede that an emotional insistence to pay off the mortgage might offer the benefit of greater peace of mind.)

None, however, acknowledged that we cannot know the future. Hence there is always uncertainty about the “best” course financially. It is possible that the path to greatest future wealth is via debt reduction, rather than investing more. No one has been to the future and back; there are no guarantees about it either way.

We do know these things: if the future is like the past, chances are one might end with more wealth by investing. And one might reduce uncertainty and increase financial security by paying the mortgage. But we don’t know if the future will be like the past.

The spreadsheet is not the future.

I wonder if there are more interesting questions worth debating… If you have what you need, what is the point of pursuing more? How do you value the feeling of owning a paid-off home? No spreadsheet—and no planner—can answer these questions for you.

Clients, when you’d like to explore the interesting questions, please email us or call. We’ll talk about it.

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When We Overcrunch the Numbers – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

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That Unimaginable Future
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As humans, we sometimes have trouble visualizing that which is not yet in existence. Back at the dawn of personal computing, when some were predicting that most homes would eventually have a computer in them, a common question was, “Why would they?”

People just struggled to imagine all the uses that would emerge.

Later, after the wonders of cable television spread across the land, talk of a new kind of communication technology arose—sort of a two-way or interactive television. These earliest visions of the internet were also met with dismissal, as people wondered what good that would be.

The lesson in this history? It may be that we are only ever scratching the surface of the potential capabilities of emerging technologies. There are many things on the horizon: ubiquitous internet access across the globe from low Earth orbit satellites, 5G and 6G and ever-faster connectivity, cloud storage of software and data at ever-decreasing prices, the “internet of things,” virtual reality and augmented reality, electronics in more and more devices… and much more.

The possibilities thrill us.

In our research, we assume that it’s beyond our capacity to foresee all the applications on the way, but we also believe that perhaps their ramifications can be guessed at. For instance…

  • More semiconductors will be needed for more devices.
  • Screens will show up in many new places on many new things, we can reasonably suppose.
  • We can readily imagine that mobile devices will handle increasing amounts of data and apps.
  • Information storage and traffic on mobile could expand exponentially.

So instead of pretending we can predict that unimaginable future, we strive to understand the structure of related industries and how these relationships might develop. Then we determine which established companies may benefit, and we’ll try to identify emerging companies with key technologies.

Then, we sort this out into what is investable, and we manage portfolios in keeping with this background. We don’t predict the future; we imagine some probable possibilities.

Clients, if you have some insight that might help us, or want to talk about this, please email us or call.

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Play the audio version of this post below:

That Unimaginable Future – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

This text is available at https://www.228Main.com/.