March 28, 2024

Bucks: Feeling Overwhelmed? Take a Deep Breath


Carl Richards is a financial planner in Park City, Utah, and is the director of investor education at the BAM Alliance. His book, “The Behavior Gap,” was published last year. His sketches are archived on the Bucks blog.

I love the sensation that comes when things feel under control. In fact, a sense of control may just be the antidote to fear. It is also one of the reasons dealing with money can be so scary. It often feels like there is very little that we can control.

When we feel like we have lost control, we get sad. That leads to feeling even more out of control, and soon it feels as if everything around us is spiraling out of our control.

There always seems to be plenty of big, bad news about big, bad things that will surely lead to the end of the world. The problem? You and I have really no control over any of it. Many of you have told me that you feel this way right now. With all the international focus on things like bank runs in Cyprus or North Korea “authorizing” a nuclear attack on the United States, it is easy to feel “out of control.”

Then, there is the personal stuff. Maybe the company you work at is laying off people, and you are wondering if you are next. Maybe you own a business, the first quarter was not so great, and you are not sure you will survive a second bad quarter. Maybe you pulled your money out of the stock market in 2008, and now you are wondering whether you will have enough resources to retire.

I remember feeling this way in 2008. I was living in Las Vegas, about to lose my home, and I felt like my business was going to disappear at any moment, too. In fact, I remember having a recurring dream about the business.

I was in a room by myself with an oversized light switch on the wall. It had the name of my business above it and the words “on” and “off.” In the dream, an evil-looking guy in a suit would come in, grab the switch, and while laughing at me like Pitch in “Rise of the Guardians,” he would flip the switch from on to off.

Some nights, I would watch the Tokyo exchange open and then stay up to see how London would open, and I was not even a trader. I just hoped to see some sign of relief. Most nights none came, and I never made it to bed.

Things were out of control, and it did not seem there was anything I could do to change that feeling.

But then change did come. It might sound like something out of a yoga class, but I remembered a friend telling me that when you feel anxious and out of control, it helps to focus on breathing.

So I did. Every time my mind started to spiral around and around these problems, I would focus on my breathing, one breath at a time. There were a few days where it seemed like all I could do was go from one breath to the next, gaining a tiny sense of control.

Nothing else had changed, but that tiny sense of control grew. After a while, I started focusing on other things that I had some control over. They were simple things, and I did not care about size.

What can I do to improve my business? What can I do to fix my finances? What about my day-to-day spending?

Some of this could not be changed right at that moment, but I found myself making plans. By focusing only on what I could control, and letting go of the rest, things changed.

The news was still just as crazy, but I let it go.

The markets were still just as scary, but I let it go.

It just takes a small step, a breath, if you will. And from there, you can increase your control and break that cycle.

Based on my conversations with many of you, I am not alone in my feelings about a lack of control. So what happens if you try shifting your focus, gently, to things you can control? What will happen if you give yourself permission to not lose sleep over the things beyond your control?

Buried in debt? Give yourself permission to focus for just the next hour on what you spend. Then, link it to another hour, a day, week, etc. Over time, you can shift to making bigger changes, but for now, just spend one hour thinking about how you can spend more responsibly.

Worried about the markets? Focus on your exposure to risk. The single biggest driver of your investment experience is how you divide up your investment money between stocks, bonds and cash. And guess what? You have complete control over that.

So take out all your investment statements. Review each investment and make sure it matches the allocation you need to meet your goals. If you need to make changes, make them. Be smart about the tax implications, but don’t let the tax tail wag the investment dog.

Once we focus on the things we have some control over, and let go of those we can’t control, much of the fear, worry and anxiety goes away. So when you find yourself obsessing over the same issues time after time, remind yourself that no matter how bad things seem, there is always something you can control.

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/feeling-overwhelmed-take-a-deep-breath/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Starved Budgets Inspire New Look at Web Gambling

So district officials want residents to gamble closer to home — inside their homes, actually. Or in cafes, restaurants and bars. By year’s end the district hopes to introduce an Internet gambling hub that would allow Washington residents to play blackjack, poker and other casino-style games.

“They can do it from Starbucks, a restaurant, bar or hotel, or from a private residence,” said Buddy Roogow, executive director of the D.C. Lottery, who expects the new games to eventually raise $9 million a year. “That’s real money in D.C.”

It’s an idea gaining currency around the country: virtual gambling as part of the antidote to local budget woes. The District of Columbia is the first to legalize it, while Iowa is studying it, and bills are pending in places like California and Massachusetts.

But the states may run into trouble with the Justice Department, which has been cracking down on all forms of Internet gambling. And their efforts have given rise to critics who say legalized online gambling will promote addictive wagering and lead to personal debt troubles.

The states say they will put safeguards in place to deal with the potential social ills. And they say they need the money from online play, which will supplement the taxes they already receive from gambling at horse tracks, poker houses and brick-and-mortar casinos.

“States had looked at this haphazardly and not very energetically until the Great Recession hit, but now they’re desperate for money,” said I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School, where he specializes in gambling issues.

When it comes to taxing gambling, he said, “the thing they have left is the Internet.”

Federal efforts over the last year to legalize online gambling have failed, so the moves by the District of Columbia and the states have put them into a murky legal arena with a potentially big obstacle. The Justice Department in recent years has vigorously pursued operators of offshore Internet casinos, shutting down their sites and arresting their executives when they travel to the United States.

The agency’s position has been that these operations violate federal laws including the Wire Act of 1961, which prohibits wagering over telecommunications systems that cross state or national borders.

The move by states to allow online wagering prompted two United States senators last month to ask the Justice Department to quash those efforts, too. In their letter, Senators Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, said that about a dozen states were considering such efforts.

“In many cases, Internet gambling advocates in those states cite the silence of the Department of Justice in the face of these efforts as acquiescence,” the letter says. “We respectfully request that you reiterate the Department’s longstanding position that federal law prohibits gambling over the Internet, including intrastate gambling (e.g. lotteries).”

Alisa Finelli, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, declined to comment beyond saying that the department was considering the senators’ letter.

In the past, federal prosecutors have sent letters to a handful of states telling them that federal law prohibits “all forms” of online gambling. And in 2006, Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act, which prohibits businesses from taking the proceeds of illegal bets placed over the Internet.

But legal experts say the law sent a mixed message to the states. It seems to carve out an explicit exception for states to run online gambling operations. But in the bill’s legislative history, it says it is not meant to amend existing law on the subject, which can be taken to mean that the Wire Act prohibitions still apply, said Mark Hichar, a lawyer who specializes in gambling law at Edwards, Angell, Palmer Dodge in Boston.

“The legislative history is a real head-scratcher,” Mr. Hichar said.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=980f95ea5e9d824db786a6edae154d2e