Some credit Peter Drucker for coming up with this line. Some say Steve Jobs said it first. Still others say it was Abraham Lincoln who coined the phrase. I’m not sure I care who said it. I like it, and based on the three men it’s attributed to, I think it must have some truth to it.

But if I could be so bold, I would take it further: “The only way to predict the future is to create it.”

There are three kinds of people who try to predict the future. Those who don’t know. Those who don’t know that they don’t know. And those who know that they don’t know but get paid a ton of money to act like they know. When it comes to investing, whether they know what they know or not, the money they are being paid is YOURS.

The problem is that the average person who is saving for his future believes that predicting the future is precisely the job of the person into whose hands his financial future is placed.  I should say, at the very least his financial future. One could make the case that finances envelop just about every area of someone’s future. So when our money is mismanaged by prognosticators, they have not only wasted your money but have laid waste to much more.

Not only do most investors think this is what advisors and money managers are supposed to do, they believe that it can be done. But the fact is, it cannot be done and never has been done. There is not one shred of evidence to say that it has. Not one human being can predict the future. Some get lucky for short periods of time. And much money is spent convincing us that this luck is skill, but none of this changes the fact that these people cannot do the same thing two times in a row. No one can do it.

Except for you and only where your future is concerned. Which is the point anyway.

Within the bounds of what God allows for each of our lives (our health, our hard-wired talents, etc.), we have great latitude with respect to how we live. What we do for a living, how much we spend and save, what we value, whom we spend time with. The list goes on and on. And so it becomes quite true that in many respects, we can create our own future. We can never know exactly what will happen, but we can have more to say about it than any other human being can, especially money managers.

Stop guessing. Create it.

I hope to see you at Mind OVER Money in October. Take hold of this thing once and for all.

Evan