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Three Ways Investors Negatively Impact Their Investment Returns (With Examples)
Behavioral investment pitfalls can have a significant impact on investment returns for the average investor. The impact can be anywhere from 0.5% to 1.0%+ per year. But that’s the average impact on the average investor. The reality is that this impact will manifest differently for each investor and it could be years or even decades before an individual investor gets trapped by one of these behavioral pitfalls.
An average impact of 0.5% to 1.0% makes it sound like this happens every year. While this is true on average, it actually reflects many different experiences for many individual investors.
The truth is that some investors will experience no behavioral impact on their investment return for years and years before suddenly experiencing a negative effect. The AVERAGE impact of 0.5% to 1.0% means that in a given year some people experience no impact and others experience a small or large impact.
The problem is that this can lead investors into a false sense of security. It can make it seem like everything is going well until suddenly it’s not.
In this post we’ll provide three examples of how behavioral investment pitfalls can actually manifest in an investor’s portfolio and how they impact long-term investment returns.
When It Comes To Investing We’re Our Own Worst Enemy
Compounding interest is a beautiful thing. It’s like magic. Give it enough time and compounding interest can turn even the smallest amount of money into millions.
Investing CAN be as easy as that, just set it and forget it. But when it comes to investing, we’re our own worst enemy.
Without guidance, rules, plans, checks and balances, we as individuals can cause some serious damage to our investment portfolios. We’re biased in many different ways and those biases create many behavioral investing pitfalls to watch out for.
There are many different behavioral investing pitfalls to be aware of, but some are more common than others (especially now that investing is even more easy and accessible). Some can be reduced with new investment options that automatically rebalance but there is still a risk.
Are you currently making one of these three behavioral investing mistakes?!?
Negotiate Your Salary And Move Employers Often
One of the most important pieces of a financial plan is income. Without an income it’s simply impossible to achieve any financial goals. Plus, having a higher income makes financial goals significantly easier to achieve.
While expenses often get a lot of focus because they’re entirely within our control, the fact is that without a certain level of household income it becomes much harder to save, invest, and still cover monthly spending.
This is why income, and specifically how income changes, should be an important part of every financial plan. Increasing income over time will make financial goals significantly easier to achieve, it makes debt payments a smaller proportion of net income, and it makes it possible to juggle competing priorities.
But unlike spending, income is unfortunately not completely within our control.
Increasing your annual income can be done a number of different ways. There are “side hustles”, there are second jobs, there is semi-passive income from rental properties etc. etc.
But the best and easiest way to increase income is to get paid more for what you’re already doing. You’re already at work, why not get paid more for doing the same thing?!? No “side hustle” required. No extra work. No stress of rental properties and bad tenants.
Increasing income is quite common, especially in a persons early 20’s and 30’s. On average income increases 7% per year during this phase. Once we reach our 40’s the pace of increases starts to slow down but those 15-20 years of steady increases can make a big difference.
How do you get salary increases of 7% per year (on average)? It takes a few things to make it easier, negotiating your salary is one, and unfortunately, switching employers often is another.
How impactful is increasing your income? Massive. In our example below, over a person’s working career, it’s equal to about $585,000 or 20,000 hours of extra work.
So, what would you prefer? Negotiating your salary every few years? Or putting in an extra 20,000 hours work (or about 10 years!)