American Consequences - September 2017

THE WORST THING TO DOWHEN INVESTING IS TO NEVER START... HERE'S HOWTO GET STARTED

Nearly half of all Americans are ruining their financial future...

A survey from online banking-news aggregator Bankrate found that 52% of Americans are not invested in the stock market, including in their retirement accounts.

By Dr. David Eifrig

Not investing is one of the biggest mistakes you can make if you want a wealthy retirement.

Some of those folks probably have great excuses. Maybe they lost a job... Or they don’t trust Wall Street... Probably, money is tight. Or it’s just “too hard” to figure out the brokerage forms to get started.

Money, in today’s society, represents a sense of security. We need money in order to obtain what we need to survive... food, shelter, medicine. Any threat of losing money can trigger the amygdala to kick in full force. But that fear is dangerous to your investments. The “safest” thing for your amygdala is to follow the crowd... to stay out of the market until you hear that everyone is buying in – normally at the top. When you hear cocktail-party chatter filled with stories of stock victories, that’s a classic sign of the end of a bull market and the start of a bear market. It works the same way with fear, too...

Not investing is one of the biggest mistakes

you can make if

These excuses are all based on fear.

you want a wealthy retirement.

When it comes to investing, fear prevents most people from starting. Whether it’s fear of losing money or fear stemming from ignorance. It’s common investor behavior to freeze in the face of fear. A tiny part of your brain called the amygdala kicks in whenever there’s a perceived threat.

The amygdala makes us want to avoid risk.

As author and financial columnist Jason Zweig writes in his book , Your Money and

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