Manage Your Love Life Like You Manage Your 401k

If one day you notice that the stocks in your 401k portfolio are slightly falling, what do you do? A wise investor keeps an eye on the stock market. The investor doesn’t pull dump that particular market at the first sign of trouble, however there is trouble and then there is trouble.

Let me explain.

If CNN News reports that stock of a company just drastically fell because the top officers robbed the company and people’s retirement funds are gone (i.e. Enron), would you allow your money to hang around in that stock or pull out? I hope you said you would pull out because you’d be foolish not to.

Why should you pull out?

Because you’ve seen this type of behavior before with Enron and others and you already know how this is going to end and if it’s not already too late, your intuition is screaming for you to pull your money out.

Same thing in a relationship; routinely, you won’t pull out of the relationship at the first sign of trouble. However, there are some behaviors that warrant immediate dumping of a relationship. Let’s examine a few:

• You discover that he or she is marriedn • He or she verbally or physically abuses you.
• You discover they have lied about something major, i.e. not having children, never having been married or even what their career field is.

Without question there are times something may affect the economy and the stock market may drop a significant number of points. However, within the next day or so, the points start to head upward. It’s scary but you held your own and decided to wait and see.

The same applies to relationships. There are some behaviors that should be watched closely and if the behavior is never repeated or is short-lived, you hold on to the relationship. A few examples of this type of behavior:

• He says he’ll call on a certain day or at a certain time and he does not.
• She says you can depend on her to run a crucial errand for you, stands you up on it and then says she forgot.
• The person exhibits moody behavior and acts as if they would rather be alone.

While it is wise to keep an eye on these types of behaviors to see if they continue, at the onset, I would say wait to see if the adverse reappears. People don’t call you or call you back when they said they would for a number of reasons – they could be ill; they could be bogged down with a work project or personal issue they don’t want to talk about. Someone forgetting to run an important errand for you could be a genuine mistake; they simply forgot. If you that your love interest is not acting like their usual self, it’s possible something is going on in their life that has nothing to do with you.

Keep your eye on this fluctuating market though and if these types of behavior continue or becomes habitual, that means the stock’s point have gone down too low so don’t waste your time hoping that it will rise again; it’s time to remove this stock from your relationship 401k stock portfolio.