Michelle thought a good investor was one that was ‘always-on’.
For her, that meant keeping up with the latest news. Listening to finance podcasts on the bus ride into work (and home again). Always scanning for insights and looking for ways to get ahead. Every payday, without fail, she’d pull out her phone and open her banking app to try and figure out what to do next. Well, to be honest, it was more like every day.
The more she tried to stay on top of everything, the heavier it all felt.
Her mind would go into overdrive:
“Should I invest more this month? No, let’s wait till things calm down – the market is a little crazy right now.”
“Oh, those funds in that article looked interesting – maybe I should switch from what I’m currently investing in.”
It wasn’t like Michelle would act on a whim – she was a very thoughtful investor. But because she put so much thought into investing, it began to feel like a burden rather than a means to securing her future. It was tiring rather than empowering.
What compounded things was that Michelle knew that markets move in cycles – that long term thinking was required. But with every new deposit came a new decision, bringing hesitation and doubt. If markets sank, so did her heart. If headlines courted chaos and uncertainty, it made the chatter in her head seem even louder.
Michelle thought more research, more knowledge, and constant shuffling would get her closer to her goals. But it had the opposite effect. All that repeated effort and decision-making made her want to give up. Not because she didn’t care, but because each decision added a little more mental load to her day. The more often she had to decide, the fuller her head became, meaning the more likely she was to make decisions based on emotion. There’s nothing wrong with being emotionally attached to a goal, it’s another to allow your emotions to dictate how you invest.
Michelle didn’t need to keep pushing herself to be the perfect investor. What she needed was her time back and fewer opportunities to second guess herself. She wondered if she could build her payments into a system, regardless of what the markets were doing or what her head was telling her.
As radical as it might sound, Michelle set up an automatic payment. It only took a few minutes to set up. She didn’t change the amount she was putting in or her goals. She changed the rhythm. The internal debate subsided, because the amount and frequency were set. Markets rose and markets fell, but she stayed steady because her contributions were now automated.
It didn’t mean that all of a sudden Michelle became rich, but the heaviness she’d felt towards investing lifted almost immediately. The constant second-guessing dissipated. Investing, or the amount of space it occupied in her mind faded away into the background. It was something she did, but no longer needed to actively manage.
Did anything change for Michelle on that long bus ride into town and back again? Well, it became less about business and more about pleasure. She swapped news articles for novels and finance podcasts for pop playlists. Sometimes, though, when no one was looking, when the lights were dim, or the bus passed through a tunnel, Michelle would pull out her phone and take a sneaky look at her investing app. Just to track her progress, mind you. After all, she was only human. A human whose life is a little lighter and quieter.
Tempo is built to create that same sense of ease. By setting up your own automatic payments for your goals, you can lighten your mental load and let consistency do the work.
