Most investors don’t abandon a sound plan because it stopped working. More often, they get distracted by someone else’s results that seem better, faster or more exciting.
Maybe a neighbor bought the right technology stock, or a relative bet everything on a single stock that skyrocketed. Whatever the circumstances, the investor who was on track may feel suddenly feel left behind.
Nothing about their financial life has changed. Their income needs and retirement goals remain — including their time horizon, risk tolerance, family responsibilities and desired lifestyle. Their plan may still be accomplishing its goal, but comparison has made real-world progress feel inadequate.
Thatap the danger of envy. In investing, fear grabs the most attention, but envy can be even more corrosive. It changes the scoreboard and replaces your measure of success with someone else’s outcome.
A financial plan is designed to define your game and establish a path toward your desired results. It accounts for questions like: What income will I need? How much risk can I afford? What responsibilities do I carry? What kind of life do I hope to fund? What would make me feel comfortable, independent, useful, generous and free?
Envy replaces those questions with their counterparts: Why does my friend make more? Why didn’t I buy that stock? Why does their retirement look easier? Why does their timing seem better?
When those questions enter, you’re no longer evaluating your plan; you’re playing someone else’s game.
Even if you were to win someone else’s game in this moment, what would it accomplish?
There will always be a hotter stock, a luckier neighbor, a more aggressive investor or a more dramatic story. The investor who bet everything on a single stock and got lucky makes diversification look boring in hindsight. Someone taking more risk will occasionally be rewarded for it, at least temporarily. If your idea of success depends on getting one leg up on everyone else, both contentment and discipline become fragile.
Mismatched time horizons can also spark envy. A long-term plan gets measured against a short-term surge. A diversified portfolio is judged against one standout holding. Years of steady accumulation are compared to a fortunate trade. Your full financial life, with all its responsibilities and tradeoffs, is weighed against someone else’s most visible result.
Thatap not a fair comparison, and itap rarely an honest one. We may hear about a winning investment, but not the losing ones. We may see the vacation, but not the debt. We may witness the stock that tripled, but not the concentrated risk that remains. While we envy the result, we don’t often know about the anxiety, volatility or tradeoffs.
Gratitude works differently. To clarify, gratitude is not simply being thankful and refusing to complain. Nor is it pretending life is easy, ignoring financial challenges or settling for less than you should. Instead, itap the discipline of appreciating true and real value in life.
A working plan has value even when other investments temporarily outperform it. The ability to save, invest, own productive assets, receive income and participate in an innovative economy is not a small thing. A portfolio doesn’t need to win every comparison in order to fund a meaningful life.
Understanding this idea is clarity, not complacency.
The purpose of investing is not to own every winner or have the best dinner-time story, but rather to support a life with income, independence, flexibility, dignity, and generosity. Through that lens, gratitude can build financial discipline.
This perspective is especially important amid rapid innovation. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how businesses operate. Biotechnology and gene editing are attacking diseases that once seemed permanent. New medicines are changing the treatment of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions. Autonomous vehicles, drones, reusable rockets, advanced energy systems, robotics and global communication networks are expanding what people and companies can accomplish.
This is a remarkable time to live, but progress never arrives evenly. Some people benefit early. Some companies win. Some investors get lucky. Thatap the nature of innovation as it creates, destroys, rearranges, surprises and unsettles.
That progress inherently produces different reactions depending on how (or if) someone has participated in it. Envy makes uneven progress feel like unfairness, resentment and missed opportunity. Gratitude makes progress look like evidence that the world is still creating possibilities.
Playing someone else’s game often leads investors to accept risks they would never have chosen on their own. They concentrate when they should diversify or speculate when they should plan. They abandon patience because it looks unimpressive next to a sudden windfall.
The antidote is perspective and knowing your own scoreboard before the world hands you another one. A steady plan, followed faithfully, may help your future more than an exciting idea pursued for the wrong reasons.
Next time comparison taunts you, pause before acting. Ask yourself: Have my goals changed? Is my plan failing, or am I simply tempted by someone else’s fleeting result? Is the decision I’m considering rooted in strategy, or is envy disguising itself as opportunity?
Financial success is not measured by whether you capture every winner or keep pace with every temporary success story, but by whether your resources support the life you desire.
Steve Booren is the founder of Prosperion Financial Advisors in Greenwood Village. He is the author of “Blind Spots: The Mental Mistakes Investors Make” and “Intelligent Investing: Your Guide to a Growing Retirement Income” He was named by Forbes as a 2024 Best-in-State Wealth Advisor, and a Barron’s 2024 Top Advisor by State.
