His [Ryan] Day Is My Everyday

Ohio State Lost: I Witness These Same Errors Every Damn Day

Don’t Be Ryan Day

I should be surprised, at what Ryan Day did. But, I see the same mistakes, every single day, when it comes to personal finance. With the same result.

I sat in disbelief. There was no way that this was the game plan, was it? It was wrong from the start.

• The only unit where Michigan out-matched Ohio State? Michigan defensive line, where 2 NFL first-rounders play, vs Ohio State offensive line, who were backups since the first string was hurt.

• So, the plan was to run it up the middle 100x? All for a single goal: to prove that OSU was tough. There is a statistic that Fox displayed,¹ which stated that the team that won the rushing statistic wins the game. While that was true in the past, that is a statistic that did not fit the individual situation (OSU has three wide receivers that will make the NFL, certainly). Side note, this proves another point here: pride is [wildly] overrated. You had one assignment, you set it aside, all to prove a point? How Hillary [and now Kamala] of you.

The entire point of this Newsletter is to correct fundamental misunderstandings in finance. I don’t care what the origins are, I cannot put us in a time capsule, “start where you are,” the red arrow, etc.: that’s the point.

It couldn’t get worse, could it? Incredibly, it did. It is bad enough that OSU had the wrong idea, from the beginning. It happens. You can want to prove a point. Ryan Day made it much, much worse. He didn’t adjust, even after there was ample, indisputable evidence², and a limited amount of time. There is no excuse for that, it’s 100% on him. Third quarter, fourth quarter, more of the same damn thing. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t, I couldn’t believe it. The score could’ve been much worse, Michigan we failed to score twice inside the 10 yard line, once on a 4th down stop, once on a terrible interception.

I Shouldn’t Have Been Surprised

Getting the wrong idea, that is one thing. When it comes to personal finance, this is my day, every single day. These are easy examples.

• “I didn’t get any return from my investment in insurance.” Huh? That presumes that insurance is an investment. It isn’t.

• “It’s not timing the market, it’s time in the market.” In the ‘average case,’ this can be true. But, average doesn’t help when Murphy’s Law hits (2022, 2008, 2000, etc), and the losses are so large that you face possible ruin, because there was nothing to guarantee a recovery (remember the red arrow). That is the language of people that simply do not understand the implications of “stocks for show, bonds for dough,” sequence risk, or how diversified portfolios actually work. ³

Then, armed with the wrong idea, you don’t adjust. Just like Ryan Day, it was his 100% his fault…and yours.

• “I have never heard of this, and I have 40 years of professional experience.” WHAT IN THE ACTUAL #%#^???? This is an actual sentence that I read from a person in my inbox. This is like saying: “I have decades of professional experience, spoken with central banks, been to 50+ countries. I cannot have the disease that you, Doctor, are mentioning.” For me to diagnose an medical illness is beyond unthinkably bad. Let me be very, very clear: I cannot help you. You represent a mindset that risks all of the work I am doing for others, in many cases for free, my contributions to the Alliance for Lifetime Income, and Maximize Your Medicare.

• This video on Medigap selection is almost the worst.⁴ This is a situation where it ‘looks and sounds credible,’ but it lacks a complete understanding of options pricing, upon which all insurance is based. The layers of “it gets worse” are many. The easiest layer is that this speaker is also a Certified Financial Planner, which leads to a whole new set of private angst. There might be an alternative explanation, other than incomplete understanding. That alternative is that the person DOES understand, and is INTENTIONALLY misleading the audience, in the pursuit of clicks and views.⁵ The cherry on top? The comments, by the general audience and insurance agents, which approve of the findings of the video. There is a reason I don’t spend time trolling, I will be too disappointed, paralyzed, preventing me from doing my actual work as assigned. The list is long, YouTube isn’t helping.

Easy Takeaway

Don’t be like Ryan Day, when it comes to your money. This isn’t a Michigan vs Ohio State thing. Columbus OH is a fine place. I was shocked, I had never been there until I presented at the Annual Financial Planning Association conference this past September.

Ryan Day is right, on this video, though. Video has date and timestamps, y’all. I am pretty sure that BuckeyeNation wouldn’t be thrilled to be grouped collectively as if a single entity.

The footnotes, containing valuable insight, available to paid subscribers only.