Actually, Investing IS Sexy!

"OK really?", you say. "You'd really risk thousands of followers by saying something so obviously ridiculous?".

Now, while I do appreciate the point you might make there, I ask you to consider what makes something "sexy", aside from the obvious.

In that context, I simply mean something fun, something we like to do. A high-speed anything, in motor vehicles or non-motorized sports like skiing, there are events that are "sexy". Same with sky diving and underwater diving, and also with anything that any of us finds outstanding and fun.

But there's another thing all those things have in common with the obvious and also with investing: they are something which must be done to achieve the end that they promise. There's no debating.

We may have to include an extreme sport to unlock our thought processes and become more open-minded. We may have to have the procreative effort to perpetuate the species. We may have to invest to avoid running out of money while medical science keeps us alive with breakthrough after breakthrough.

In my financial life, I often have to discuss with people why they shouldn't use their life expectancy to figure out how much money they need. Let me show you what I mean:

Customer X says confidently that they will live until they're 84 and that's pushing it based on their family history. I don't push back and we plan for 84. Fast forward now to when Customer X really is 84. Following the plan, they are about to run out of money.

The only problem is that medical science didn't cooperate with the plan, and politics fortunately had nothing to do with it. Researchers figured out how to eliminate cancer, how to use artificial stem cells, and have even used a tool called CRISPR to literally edit bad stuff out of DNA.

Customer X suddenly has a life expectancy of 102 instead of 84, but sadly, Customer X has no more money.

If only Customer X had done the "sexy" thing of getting excited about investing since it would obviously make such a difference in their own personal future.

We know from Behavioral and Psychological research that as humans we really go out of our way to avoid bad news. In one study, college age participants were tested for low-level but nonetheless annoying STDs. They were given two choices: 1) find out the results, 2) pay $10 to never find out the results.

63% paid the $10.

That's kind of funny, but the impact of the majority of us retiring and not having money will not be funny.

Don't be in that boat. Do the "sexy" thing instead.