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Optimize for Survival

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Although we often glorify risk taking as a general principle, optimal outcomes are the result of pushing the limits only within a threshold of which you can survive. To assume a position completely void of optionality is to paint yourself into a corner and given enough time will result in catastrophic loss or death. You Can’t Know Try as we might, humans have thus far failed to prove an ability to predict the future. Sure we can make decent guesses in certain domains and that ability has increased in the age of data science, but to date even our best predictive models are akin to child’s play when you take a hard look backwards in time. If you don’t believe me, write down your local weather forecast for the next ten days, record the actual weather each day, and compare the two afterwards. We’ve been trying to predict the weather for the entirety of recorded human history and we can’t even get that right a lot of the time.  As it turns out, the more rare the occurrence of an...

Mitigating Financial Risk: Practical Steps to Guard Against Economic Uncertainty

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Worried about what the future of the economy looks like? Me too. We live in a world where both disease and panic can spread faster than ever before. So what do you do when the majority of economic activity comes to a screeching halt? Here are some practical strategies you can implement immediately that (I think) will help mitigate the financial risk related to uncertainty in the current economic environment.  *Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor, these are simply my own opinions which reflect the actions I am personally taking. Please consult with a licensed financial advisor for specific advice related to your situation. Prepare an Emergency Fund Hopefully you already have a dedicated savings account for emergencies, but if not, now is definitely the time to create one and put any extra money you can save into it. Experts recommend having enough to cover at least three months of expenses and ideally twelve. Personally I like Ally Bank’s High Interest Online Savings Acco...