Investing when “Everything Stays”
Investing? Everything Stays!Today’s article is something a little different – something light to send you into the weekend. Yes, it’s another example of teaching your kids about money with television. What if we could take a kids’ song and make it into a money lesson? I didn’t set out to make this happen. However, spending a lot of time with kids and thinking about personal finance often leads to odd combinations.
Or to put it another way, “Something weird might just be something familiar viewed from a different angle.”
My kids love Adventure Time and it’s good for adults to watch as well. Somewhere along the line, I couldn’t follow the story (it’s very weird). However, I enjoyed the songs, particularly the ones from Marceline (Olivia Olson), so I got the soundtrack for the kids. That’s when one song caught my attention in the car. I would later find out that it made the an LA Times list of top songs that make you cry.
Watch this short 90-second “Everything Stays” from the Cartoon Network show Adventure Time:
In case you aren’t able to watch here are some of the lyrics: (It’s much more meaningful in the full context with the music.)
“Everything stays right where you left it
Everything stays
But it still changes
Ever so slightly, daily and nightly
In little ways, when everything stays”
Isn’t that a tremendous description of buy-and-hold investing? Your shares stay, but there are slight daily changes to the value of the shares.
“Go down to the ocean
The crystal tide is raising
waters’ gotten higher as the shore washes out
Keep your eyes wide open, even when the sun is blazin’
The moon controls the tide, it can cause you to drown”
This quote reminds me of watching the warning signs when you own a stock. The last line about the moon controlling the tide is a reminder that the fate of a stock is often out of your hands once you’ve made the decision to buy.
Index funds don’t require you to keep your eyes open. The moon rarely can cause few diversified portfolios to drown.
What did you think? Was this something too weird or familiar when looked at from a different angle? Let me know in the comments.