My Final Post: 6 Things I Learned During My Time at Tableaux Wealth

Hi everyone.

For those who haven’t heard yet, this will be my last post at Tableaux Wealth.

I will be leaving to pursue an M.S. in Finance and Investment Management full-time and am greatly appreciative of the support from everyone at Tableaux Wealth.

Matt approached me about doing a final post on topics I’ve learned in my time here, and given that I had regularly written articles, we agreed it would be a nice way to have a final post from me before I begin school.

I spent some time thinking about what topics I wanted to cover: did I want it to be more about financial advice, financial planning techniques, investing, or just about life in general?

I decided, why not include all of it.

I feel as if with each chapter of my life I’ve benefited from reflecting on what I thought I did well or didn’t in previous chapters and try to carry those lessons learned with me to the next one.

So, I included things I learned specifically here at Tableaux, some things I learned in previous chapters that I thought carried over well to the work I did here, and some general thoughts about life that I developed during this time.

I distilled the list down to six things, though I covered a lot in those items.

If you’ve read any of my previous articles, you know I don’t mind a long-winded post.

Luckily for Catherine and Joe this is the last post of mine they’ll have to review for compliance, so that should free up a significant amount of their time. (Thank you for putting up with my preference for the long form.)  

I hope you enjoy this. And thank you for being a part of the journey.

1.  Personal finance should be more personal

Yes, I know I'm starting off with one that’s pretty cliche, but I think it can’t be understated and I’m getting it out of the way first.

In conversations I would often feel that people were looking for the “right” answer.

Questions, such as:

“Should I buy instead of rent?”

“Should I invest this extra money or pay off a debt early?”

“What should my allocations be to stocks versus bonds?”

These questions were often followed by “What do the numbers say?”

And hey, I get it, I’m a numbers guy too. So I truly understand why these are such a common question.

What I came to find is that I believe the numbers make a better starting point for decision making than the be-all, end-all deciding factor.

We can always run a Monte Carlo simulation and see how these decisions impact the bottom line.

But what I found to be more important than optimizing down to the decimal point was how these decisions impacted their ability to accomplish clients’ goals, support the lifestyle they want to live, and make their financial journey as enjoyable as possible.

While all these valid questions did have an optimal quantitative answer, to me it was more important to understand their qualitative value.

I would respond with follow-up questions like:

“Is it more important to you to own your home or to maintain more geographic flexibility if an opportunity came available?”

“What emotions do you feel when we look at your debt numbers?”

“Do fluctuations in your portfolio value keep you up at night?”

As I guided clients through the decision-making process, I always started with the numbers but wanted to spend more time exploring the psychological aspects of these decisions.

As some of you may have heard me say, we could always see what the numbers say, but what’s most important to me is that you have a financial plan you are both confident in and comfortable with.

And most importantly, it’s what YOU want to do.

Money is more than a math formula – it's a means to achieving the life we want to live.

2.  Learn to play great defense before learning to play great offense

Paul Tudor Jones, a well-known hedge fund manager, said people should learn to play great defense before learning to play great offense when it comes to investing.

Expanding on that, he said investors would be better off spending only 10% of the time focusing on how to make money and 90% of the time managing your risk.

Something I’ve written about in the past is the defense and offense of financial planning, and where Paul and I agree is that defense is the most important of the two.

Like in sports, it’s difficult to win the game of personal finance if you can’t play defense.

How I differentiate between the two is, offense is how you proactively achieve your goals; defense is how you protect yourself from disruption or disaster along the way.

Defense is how you stay in the game and on-track when the unexpected happens.

Some examples of playing great defense with your financial plan are:

• Keeping your fixed expenses at 50% - 60% of your monthly spending, and being able to cut back drastically if you needed to

• Having an emergency fund and multiple levels of contingencies to cover your fixed expenses if you are temporarily without income

• Avoiding the wealth destruction effects of carrying high-interest debt

• Being properly insured

• Having a thorough estate plan

These are the things that keep you on track when Murphy’s Law occurs.

One of the most understated aspects of defense is contingency planning.

When I was in the Army, I was a communications specialist for my Special Forces team.

It was my responsibility to make sure my team always had reliable communications during our missions.

For anyone who has ever worked with radios or other communications devices, there’s one thing that we’ve all learned.

That is, these devices have a tendency to fail when you need them most.

It was crucial to always have a plan to be able to communicate with each other when things started to fail, so before we went on any mission, I would always develop a communications PACE plan: Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency.

This ensured we already had multiple methods of communicating with each other should our primary methods fail us, and wouldn’t have to come up with a new plan on the fly.

Great communications specialists always had a PACE plan; the best had a PACEE for even more disaster insurance.

To best protect yourself against financial disasters, always have a plan with multiple contingencies.

That is how you survive and thrive.

3.  Agility is the new stability

Let me continue with another financial planning topic.

This one is more targeted to people earlier in their financial journey, but I think it can be universally applied.

I believe agility is the new stability.

Financial stability can have different definitions for different people.

But for generations that came before mine, some common metrics of financial stability were things like owning your home, having a job with benefits, stable employment with a single employer long-term and building up a pension, reaching the age of Social Security, and being able to retire, for example.

Some of the things I am about to say may not feel good to hear, but I think we need to have an honest conversation about what financial stability looks like for younger generations moving forward.

We are in an era where the achievability of the American Dream is often questioned.

We know home affordability is near all-time lows based on metrics like comparing the median home price to the median household income.

We know things like demographic trends and fiscal irresponsibility bring the future viability of programs like Social Security into question.

We know younger generations are taking on more debt at a faster pace than prior generations.

And we still don’t fully understand how technological advancements like artificial intelligence will impact the workforce.

Are these things going to get better or worse? I don’t know. No one does.

I’m not saying any of this to be dramatic; these are just real conversations and concerns I’ve heard from people.

We cannot control these things, but here’s what we can do—we can control how we prepare ourselves to handle future challenges.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but I wholeheartedly believe it’s possible.

When I say agility is the new stability, I mean that your ability to adjust, adapt, and be financially nimble will be your greatest defense.

We can’t control how expensive the cost of living is, but we do have an influence over how much we earn and how much we spend.

Can you keep your fixed costs low and be able to cut back on discretionary spending if you had to?

Can you manage your lifestyle in a way that you are ready and able to seize an opportunity at another company, another industry, or across the country to increase your income?

We have little control over whether we’re laid off or our job is replaced, but we can continue to build new skills and have a financial cushion that can sustain us through periods without income.

Are you keeping up with new trends and developing skills that will be in high demand, or continuing to develop transferable skills that make you an asset regardless of your industry?

Do you have an emergency fund or investments that can support you through periods between incomes?

Have you developed multiple streams of income?

Are you willing to take on part-time or gig work to get by until your next opportunity?

We can’t control whether our employer provides a retirement benefit or if Social Security will always exist, but we can provide for our own retirement.

Are you frequently and consistently contributing to your own retirement investments?

Are you taking advantage of any and all methods available to you such as IRAs, Roth IRAs, HSAs, and taxable brokerage accounts, whether or not your employer provides a pension or a sponsored retirement plan?

I’m not saying anything I’ve mentioned above is ideal.

But our financial success begins with taking ownership of our situation and setting ourselves up to be able to endure challenges and roll with the punches.

4.  Be a market observer, not a market predictor

Investing is a game of trying to live in the future.

That is, you shouldn't invest based on the present; you should invest based on what the state of the world or the economy will be in the future.

This leads many to try to predict what they think will happen in the markets.

But I believe this is where most investors get it wrong.

Rather than trying to predict what I think will happen, I prefer to listen to what the market is telling me IS happening.

Let me explain.

One of the core tenets of Dow Theory, named after the works of Charles Dow, is that stock markets are a discounting mechanism.

Meaning, rising prices are a collective expression of a positive outlook, and falling prices are a collective expression of a negative outlook.

That’s the beautiful thing about market prices.

While any one individual has a high likelihood of being wrong, the market represents the collective consciousness of all participants, expressed through the price of whichever market you are analyzing.

Charles Dow used this theory to anticipate future economic conditions at least three months in advance by analyzing price movement in railroad and industrial stocks, which at the time were the two most influential industries in the American economy.

Similarly, Stanley Druckenmiller, widely regarded as one of the greatest investors of all time, has said on multiple occasions that the stock market is the best economist he knows.

He said one of his most reliable indicators of economic activity is stock prices of particular industries that typically lead real economic conditions.

This is why I believe investing isn’t a game of prediction; it’s a game of listening, which highlights the distinction of being a market observer, not a market predictor.

No one is right 100% of the time, not even the best.

But the key is to develop a framework to monitor markets, in real time, that typically express a future view, giving yourself a better chance to be right more often than wrong.

The market is always telling you exactly what it thinks. You just have to learn to speak the language and be willing to listen.

5.  Be willing to change your mind, quickly

I’ll say it again, when it comes to investing, no one is right 100% of the time.

Stanley Druckenmiller, who famously had a 30-year career of managing money without ever having a down year, said the key to his success wasn’t always getting it right; it was being able to quickly identify when he was wrong and change his mind.

In my last point, I said the key is to develop a framework that gives you a better chance of being right more often than wrong.

By approaching it as being right more often than being wrong, rather than being right or wrong, you’re accepting that you will be wrong at some point.

Accepting that not every pick will be a winner relieves you from feeling the need to stick with your losers in the hope they will become winners with a little more time.

This is a psychological bias often studied in behavioral finance.

Conservatism bias is the tendency to overweight current beliefs and underweight new information, leading to higher portfolio drawdowns because of an inability to change forecasts despite being presented with new information.

Anchoring bias is the tendency to hold onto a position that has fallen in price because of a fixation on a forecast that developed when the position was purchased, despite the forecast having no bearing on the actual and future value of the position.

Loss aversion bias is the tendency to prefer avoiding losses, causing investors to hold on to losing positions too long, which can lead to capitulation selling later at even lower prices.

All of these biases highlight the same point.

It’s important to identify which of your picks are winners and which ones are losers and cut your losses quickly.

Or as Peter Lynch said, “Water the flowers and pick the weeds.”

6.  Buy the guitar 

My final item on this list is the most sentimental.

To be honest, it’s something I’ve struggled to talk about, and I don’t often publicly share my personal life, but I feel there is an important message that is worth sharing.

And while it is not related to Tableaux Wealth, it did happen during my time here.

Some of the fondest memories I have of my father were watching him play guitar.

I was always amazed at how he could learn to play a song just from listening to it.

We shared a passion for similar music and would often keep each other up-to-date whenever we found new bands or songs.

Because this represented such an intimate aspect of our relationship, I had the perfect plan for a retirement gift I wanted to give him.

I was going to buy him a guitar. Not just any guitar, a Gibson Les Paul Classic with a black body and cream-colored pickguard. A guitar I knew had always caught his eye.

This guitar would not only represent times we spent together but also represent a token of my appreciation for the hardest working person I knew.

To say thank you to someone whose sole mission was to provide the best life he could for my mother, my siblings, and me.

A celebration of a mission he accomplished.

Unfortunately, my father unexpectedly passed away before reaching retirement.

And with that, I lost my father, my friend, and the opportunity to do something special for someone who meant so much to me.

Now, every day, I wish I hadn’t waited and just bought that guitar for him.

I often hear that we should live life without regrets. But in the saddest of circumstances I feel regret often consumes most of the attention.

I want to reframe that. We should live life in a way that minimizes the risk of future regret.

Time is the most valuable asset we have.

It’s difficult to gain, easy to lose, and traders rarely profit.

The most challenging aspect of all is that we never know how much time we have.

I believe we all have a guitar in our lives.

Whether it's something for someone else or for yourself, it’s something you’ve been putting off, waiting for the right time.

If there is one piece of advice I ask you to take away from this list, it’s this:

Don’t wait. Buy the guitar.  

Final thoughts

As I wrap up this article, I want to express my sincere gratitude. 

To our clients—thank you for trusting me to be part of your financial journey.

It’s been an honor to help you pursue your goals and navigate the markets together. 

To everyone at Tableaux Wealth—thank you for giving me the opportunity to be part of this firm’s story.

I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished and how much we’ve grown during my time here. 

And finally, to Matt, Shelley, and Catherine—thank you for taking a chance on me, a career changer with little prior experience.

You gave me the space and platform to learn, grow, and discover who I want to be in this industry. For that, I’ll always be deeply grateful.

Sincerely,

Kyle

All photos © J. Polidoro