Oakland, CA | East Bay; Financial Planning and Investing for the Long Term

Hi, I’m Erik Wolfers. I’m the managing member of First & Main Financial. We’ve been helping clients achieve positive financial outcomes since 2001.

Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about the long-term. When we’re investing for a client, we are investing for their entire life; it could be decades. We just recently got a client in his early twenties and so he has decades to invest—and positive movement for clients when they’re young or throughout their lives with respect to their investment portfolios, can make an enormous difference in their well-being and also in the outcome that they achieve.

One has to have a long-term perspective, the perspective of the individual, the holistic perspective, because we do go through periods of adverse market conditions or bad economic cycles. Right now, we’re just clear of the most rapid drop ever in the history of the stock market with a recovery that’s unbelievable to some people—but the stock market has recovered very well. Parts of the stock market are still depressed, but I’ve been through several adverse market cycles and when we have clients who start with us two or three years before a bad market cycle, then at the end of two or three years their returns are not great. They might be positive—we have clients who’ve been with us for about three years that have gotten pretty decent returns, but they’re not like long-term average returns and that’s because there’s a dip in the middle.

It’s natural to think that something’s wrong or that you should make changes to a portfolio, but again we’re investing for decades for most people, and so some number of years from now this dip for this adverse market environment will be a hazy memory, although what’s happened during this time may not be so hazy because it’s so unusual.

Working with us, we know who you are, what you’re about, what your time frames are, and that’s why and how we’re always going to invest your money: to try to get the best outcome for you. We would like to keep people from making changes that may permanently impair their wealth, which is what often happens when markets get wacky like they did back in March and April this year. So, be sure to have an investment horizon and attach your mind to investing horizons that are appropriate for your entire life.

If you are looking for some financial guidance; whether for a one time financial plan or continuing advice on your investments, we invite you to meet with a First & Main Financial planner for a free consultation. We would be more than happy to sit down with you, assess your situation and review our services to help navigate your financial future.