The Lazy Investor (that would be me) & Generation X Finance

I stumbled upon this really great website called Generation X Finance today. Great postings and I invite you to go there and read everything. But what caught my eye was the recent post of Jeremy's called "Add More Tools to Your Arsenal to Help Solve Your Financial Problems." It was so good that I couldn't help commenting. But my comment quickly moved into a whole article that I think you (my readers) would enjoy, so I'm including it here.

Basically Jeremy's article said that we -- the people that are struggling to gain financial independence -- should constantly look for new investment tools to help us deal with life's new challenges. Read the article for a full understanding.

However, I had to point out in my comment that what he's asking me to do -- makes me groan in protest. Simply because . . . I hate investing.

Okay, I don't hate investing because I love reading and learning about investments and investing, I just hate doing it. When you invest, you have to: (1) analyze your financial situation, (2)analyze the investment tool, (3) figure out if it will really work in your portfolio, (4) you have to fill out paper work, (5) you have monitor the new investment, (6) you stay up all night worrying about this new "thing" you don't quite understand . . . look dude, I am too lazy for all of this and frankly I don't want to do it. I have a butt-load of other things I want to do and think about and new investment tools are the last thing on my list I want to spend energy on.

So basically, I told the author of the above article, why I don't like looking for new investment tools to put in my arsenal, why I am content to use the same tools (even if they are not very efficient):

1. Lazy Investors don't want to go shopping for new tools they know nothing about.
Lazy investors want to go into our own garage, shuffle through the tool box and pull out a tool, do the job and get on with life. They DO NOT want to take a trip to the home improvement store, ask pimply-faced kid what's the best tool to use for the project, come back home and read the instructions and take all their Saturday to figure out how to use said tool.

Seriously, looking for a new tool takes a lot of time, a lot of effort and a huge learning curve. A lot of people don't feel that they have the time to learn what tool would work, how it works, and who is selling the tool. Yes, if they take the time they may benefit from it. But what if they take the time and realize that one of their tools in the garage could already take care of that task? Wouldn't that be time wasted?

2. Lazy Investors don't like to feel anxious -- it disrupts the mood.
Investors feel . . . and usually, we feel much more confident if we've dealt with that tool before and know we can depend on it. If we get a new tool we have to deal with the unease of FEELING, TESTING or trying out that tool until we feel comfortable using it. Who wants to deal with the worry?

3. Makes Lazy Investors ask "what did I get myself into?"
We are basically lazy investors (not all of us, but many of us). We didn't really want to invest anyway -- it's just a fundamental requirement to get us to financial freedom. What you are asking (look for new tools) feels like school again where we have to learn about new things.

It's like when I realized after ALGEBRA, I had to register into GEOMETRY and when I successfully passed geometry I had to register for TRIGONOMETRY and then my instructors expected me to learn CALCULUS . . . it was like someone duped me into Algebra and I was in the Math Mafia . . . I had to die just to get out of it.

That's how investments seem to be to the new investor - once you get in it grows into a life of its own. The expectations just never stop.

I know that all my readers aren't lazy investors, but what do you think about this? Am I being particularly "lazy" about this?


Photo by: Carol's Photos