Ignore the Noise
Stay Balanced with a Worldwide Diversified, Low-Cost Portfolio among Stocks and Bonds, and SLEEP!
Years ago, every July, my late husband, Dan, and I celebrated our birthdays with another couple of longtime friends. All our birthdays were in June and July. We enjoy good food, good conversation, and, yes, four free birthday desserts.
One year, as soon as we sat down, our friend Bob complained to the waiter about the noise coming from a large group sitting just two feet away. For a moment, we wondered if our dinner was doomed. The restaurant was packed—no quieter tables, and it was too late to leave. Thankfully, the noisy group had already had plenty to drink and left.
Crisis averted.
Their noise got me thinking about another kind of noise—the kind that can upend your financial peace of mind if you let it.
That year and every year since, including 2025, the financial media will bombard us with dramatic headlines, dire predictions, and conspiracy theories about the debt ceiling, tariffs, the Federal Reserve, AI, and the booming NASDAQ and whatever the latest “market shock” is supposed to be. None of this noise has anything to do with your long-term retirement plan. Don’t change your investment strategy because you hear something scary on TV or on the internet. Your plan should already account for sudden events.
So how do we prepare for uncertainty?
By staying balanced.
Stay Balanced
When markets get noisy, we feel pressure to do something. But the best protection from emotional overreaction is preparation. Set up your investment plan before those scary, gloom-and-doom forecasters scream that the earth is collapsing, and the panic button hits.
First, your mindset:
- Think long-term—15 to 20 years or more.
- Expect surprises: bubbles, crashes, inflation, deflation, and everything in between.
- Expect average market returns. Avoid anyone claiming they can consistently “beat the market.”
- If you need help, consider hiring a fee-only fiduciary advisor who is paid by the hour.
- Once your plan is set, stay with it.
- Accept that your portfolio will decline at times. That’s normal.
And then your CRUCIAL Asset Allocation:
- Please keep it simple.
- Use broad, low-cost index funds or ETFs for worldwide diversification.
- Diversify across major stock categories: Large-cap, Mid-cap, Small-cap, REITs, and International.
- Use broad bond index funds or ETFs: government Treasuries, TIPS, CDs, and intermediate-term corporate bonds.
- Rebalance once a year or when any asset class drifts more than ~5% from your target.
- Use a stock/bond ratio that matches your age and risk capacity. For example, since I am 78 years old my allocation is 40% stock and 60% bonds. A 25-year-old can afford far more stock exposure because they have decades to recover from downturns.
We expect nothing more than what the market provides. We ignore predictions because nobody reliably knows when bull or bear markets will start or end. During the 2011 debt ceiling scare, my portfolio declined by approximately 7%. We were concerned, but we didn’t change our allocation—and within four months, the portfolio recovered. I ignored the noise.
Ignore the Noise
Just as the noise at the restaurant eventually faded, the stock market settled down and grew, but the financial news and its distracting noise never fade, unfortunately. The media thrives on excitement and urgency 24/7. Their goal is attention, not your financial success. And every time investors buy and sell based on fear, Wall Street gets richer from fees and commissions.
As William Bernstein wrote in The Four Pillars of Investing:
“You are better off ignoring the entire genre—print, television, and the internet.”
A competent fee-only adviser can help you stay the course when emotions run high. That support is invaluable.
A calm, “boring” portfolio is a gift. It gives us time for family, friends, sleep, and a secure retirement. Friends who brag about their big wins rarely mention their sleepless nights or the losses they took chasing them. Slow and steady still wins.
On our birthday night, we expressed gratitude for our health, good friends, and the many years we’ve spent together. And the free desserts were delicious.
Wishing you peace, clarity, and steady progress.
Best of fortunes.
Steve
2025 update: My husband and a friend, Bob, are no longer with us. Life is short, enjoy it every day!
Steve’s Bio
Stephen A. Schullo, Ph.D. didn’t set out to become a retirement-plan advocate. He was just trying to be a good teacher.
Steve taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 24 years and, like so many educators, he trusted that the retirement plans offered at work were designed to help him retire with dignity. Instead, he discovered something very different: layers of high fees, sales commissions, confusing products, and a system that seemed to benefit everyone except the teachers it was supposed to serve.
That discovery changed the direction of his professional life.
Working in the classroom by day, Steve began learning everything he could about investing at night, eventually earning a Ph.D. from UCLA in 1996. He started writing retirement articles for the United Teacher newspaper, helping colleagues untangle the maze of Tax-Sheltered Annuities and 403(b) vendors. Over 13 years, his writing reached tens of thousands of educators across the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Along the way, he co-founded 403bAware, a teacher self-help group where colleagues met after school, asked questions, compared statements, and learned how to recognize high-cost products. He became part of an online community of thoughtful investors, contributing more than 7,500 posts since 1997. His advocacy has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, and he has testified at California legislative hearings. His union honored him with its “Unsung Hero” award for retirement-plan advocacy.
Steve’s personal financial journey is also a love story. Together with his late spouse, Dan Robertson, they wrote the book Late Bloomer Millionaires, a candid account of how two ordinary public educators, after years of being sold high-cost annuities, finally discovered low-cost index investing and built financial independence later in life. The book is part memoir, part roadmap, and fully a testament to partnership, perseverance, learning, and grace. Dan’s optimism, wit, and steady presence remain at the heart of Steve’s work today.
For the past thirteen years, Steve has served as a volunteer “Member-at-Large” (and former co-chair) on LAUSD’s Investment Advisory Committee, which oversees the district’s 403(b) and 457(b) plans for more than 55,000 current and former employees. Today, those plans hold over $2.8 billion in assets, and the committee continues to push for transparency, responsible stewardship, and low-cost investment access for all employees.
Steve launched this blog in 2012 to share what he learned the hard way:
• Teachers are not “bad with money.”
• The system was built to confuse us.
• When educators help educators, we change the outcome.
He is part of a small but spirited national network of teacher advocates who gather at 403bwise.org, where we support one another, share resources, and work toward reform.
Because every educator deserves a retirement plan that honors the work of a lifetime.
