Practical Lessons for Your Financial Life (Collection)

Chapter 2. Focus Your Predictions on What You Can Control: Your Priorities

Predictions are part of investing, and yet they are frequently misapplied or misunderstood. What purpose do predictions serve? How do predictions help us to make better decisions?

History—the past—is something we know with some certainty. But there’s an ever present mystery about what’s ahead. No one knows what’s going to happen in the future. We can make assumptions. We can speculate. We can guess. But ultimately, we all have to admit that we’re not clairvoyant; we can’t foretell the future. What we can do is study the past, identify patterns, and then apply the knowledge of patterns to the present. Still, our financial planning will be built more solidly on personal ...