05 Oct 2023 Control is not a virtue

There is a pretty strong body of evidence pointing toward the idea that the reduction in independent play in children has been instrumental in the rise of anxiety and depression in children and teens in the U.S.

As a parent, this makes intuitive sense on some level, but then again, there are reasons for the decline in independent play among children over the last several decades. It can be scary to think of your kids playing unattended in a world with traffic, the occasional bad actor, and simply out of your sight. There is an inherent risk here–risking broken bones, cuts, hurt feelings, or bad accidents–in return for children who are more likely to be healthier mentally and otherwise.

But life is risk. And in the financial parts of your life, risk is ever-present from your portfolio to your career to your charitable gifts to your big purchases to the way you talk about money with…your kids.

It can be tempting to try and control for every possible risk, and certainly there is wisdom in managing risk, but it’s important to see that over-control is itself one of the more dangerous examples of risk available to you.

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