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.

This week, we begin a new monthly video feature called “Ask the Sketch Guy.” With each post, Mr. Richards will take one question from a Bucks reader or people he has encountered in his travels, create a custom sketch to answer it and narrate on video as he wields his trusty Sharpie. If he picks your question, he’ll also send you a signed sketch.

If you’d like to ask him a question, please post it in the comments field of this post. As for this kickoff sketch, Mr. Richards chose to answer a question he’d been asking himself in his head: How could he better articulate the ever-present disconnect between our feelings about how our investments will do and the reality of the actual returns?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/the-big-lesson-of-2012-earn-your-returns/?partner=rss&emc=rss