Womack Investment Advisers

  When the ups and downs of stock markets leave you stressed and wondering whether stocks really will help you pursue your long-term financial goals, there are two things to remember: 1.     Historically, over long periods, stocks have tended to move higher. ·          For instance, at the start of October 1987, the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index was valued at 327. On Black Monday, October 19, the Index lost 22 percent in a single day. By the end of the month, it was trading at 247. Many investors wondered if their savings and investments would ever recover. By October 31, 2018, the S&P 500 was trading at 2,740. ·          In March 2000, the dot.com bubble burst. On March 10, the NASDAQ Composite closed at 5,049 and less than a month later, on April 5, the Index was trading at 4,169 – a loss of about 17 percent. Many investors wondered if their savings and investments would recover. By October 31, 2018, the Nasdaq Composite was trading at 7,304

Elizabeth Dunn, associate psychology professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and Michael Norton, associate marketing professor at Harvard Business School, have been studying whether people should spend money differently. Their goal is to figure out how to get the most happiness for the dollars spent. In Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending , they explained their experiments: “…We started doling out money to strangers. But there was a catch: rather than letting them spend it however they wanted, we made them spend it how we wanted…changing the way people spent their money altered their happiness over the course of the day. And we saw this effect even when people spent as little as $5…Shifting from buying stuff to buying experiences, and from spending on yourself to spending on others, can have a dramatic impact on happiness.” In addition, buying time can improve happiness. How do you buy time? By paying someone else to do tasks yo