“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” is a quote from Warren Buffett. And he’s got about 100 billion reasons to trust his investing advice. If I had judge the general sentiment in the personal finance world right now, I’d say it’s “fearful”. As your loyal personal finance influencer, I would love to sit here and tell you what’s going to happen with inflation, interest rates, and bank closures going forward. But the truth is I don’t know. No one does.

But here’s what I do know. We’ve been through worse. Remember in 2020 when THE ENTIRE WORLD SHUT DOWN for weeks?! We were sanitizing our groceries. Companies were going bankrupt left and right. We thought it might be an economic apocalypse like we’ve never seen before. And we were fine. And remember 2008? Banks were falling like leaves in autumn. The market was in free fall. It was ugly. And you know who was rewarded? The brave who stayed the course and kept investing along the way.

The list of calamities in our history go on and on. Great depression, 25% unemployment, 19% inflation, 20% interest rates, World Wars, presidential assassinations and impeachments, 9/11, cold war, nuclear proliferation. And guess what. We got through it. The banking system remained stable. The market continued to average 10% annually despite some bumps in the road along the way.

There’s one other thing I do know. I know what I PERSONALLY am doing right now. I’m not considering pulling money out of banks. I’m focused on putting more IN. Earning more. Saving more. Investing more. Ignoring the noise. When we come out of this, we’ll all WISH we had seized this opportunity to be greedy when others are fearful.

As always, reminding you to build wealth by following the two PFC rules: 1.) Live below your means and 2.) Invest early and often.

-Jeremy