Hans Rosling was once asked whether he was an optimist. He said no. He was, he said, a “serious possibilist.” I’ve never found a better phrase for how to think about the future, your money included.
An optimist assumes it’ll be fine. A possibilist looks at the evidence and says it could be fine, and here’s what the numbers actually show, as opposed to what the loudest people are shouting.
And the numbers are extraordinary, if you ever go and look. Extreme poverty has been falling for decades, fast, by tens of millions of people a year. You will almost never hear this. Not because it isn’t true, but because of who dominates the airwaves.
Politicians are short-termist by design. There are no votes in pointing out long-term progress they had nothing to do with. And the professional doom-mongers need the alarm kept high, because alarm is what funds the conferences and keeps the lights on. Between the two of them, you’d think the world was ending on a fairly regular schedule.
It matters for money because fear is expensive. People make their worst financial decisions when they’re convinced the sky is falling, and someone is always willing to convince them of exactly that.
Being a possibilist isn’t sticking your head in the sand. It’s the opposite. It’s actually looking at the evidence, instead of absorbing the mood.