 This year's tax refund season is shaping up to be quite a boon for taxpayers. Early reports have the average IRS tax refund is up 10.9% so far this season, with an average refund amount of $2,290.¹
For many Americans, this means a check of several thousand dollars or more landing in their bank account. The annual question remains: save it or spend it? Research suggests the answer depends less on your willpower and more on how your brain categorizes that money.
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 I recently watched Jay Kelly on Netflix, where George Clooney plays a fictional movie star who dedicates his life to his craft and succeeds by every external measure. The catch? He later admits to choosing his career over his family, only to realize he’s missed many of life’s most meaningful moments and relationships.
I don’t generally sit down to watch a movie looking for financial metaphors, that would be weird. But every so often, a story brushes up against a question I already spend time thinking about. In this case, Jay Kelly’s story happened to remind me of the FIRE movement. Whether it’s Coast, Lean, or Fat FIRE, the core philosophy is the same: front-load sacrifice in your early years to buy freedom later. The math is sound. Saving aggressively from an early age is essentially the equivalent of a financial superpower. The appeal is also undeniable. Who doesn’t want the freedom to do whatever they want in their 40s? I’ve always joked that my dream job is retirement, and FIRE is a good mechanism for getting me there. But the FIRE movement raises a complicated set of questions. What are the movement’s disciples missing by deferring their lives in their 20s and 30s? And how do we find the "goldilocks" zone between saving responsibly for the future and actually living along the way?  With the Australian Open officially wrapped up and tennis season in full swing, I thought I would take some time to write about the sport of tennis. If you caught some clips of the Aussie Open the past few weeks (or have seen Break Point on Netflix), you’ve glimpsed the emotional weight tennis players carry.
Tennis is brutal: one missed shot, one lapse in focus, and the momentum can completely flip. Unlike most sports, players can’t receive hands-on coaching during a match. They’re out on an island, forced to manage nerves and emotions with little help. A single crack can spiral into double-faults, missed opportunities, and frustrated glares toward the player box. One of the clearest displays of this dynamic came in the 2021 French Open final. I was fortunate enough to watch it live. Underdog Stefanos Tsitsipas stormed to a two-set lead over world number one Novak Djokovic, just one set away from his first Grand Slam title. Then the pressure hit. His serve faltered, unforced errors piled up, and the unraveling began. Djokovic? Calm. Methodical. Mentally unshaken. Three sets later, the trophy belonged to the Serbian superstar. Djokovic’s victory and career are a masterclass in what separates short-term brilliance from lasting greatness: the ability to stay mentally grounded when the stakes are highest.  Budgeting may easily be the least sexy habit in personal finance. And to be honest, it can really suck. It’s tedious, it’s boring, and it often confronts us with truths we’d rather keep in the background.
In my line of work, I routinely hear clients say: “Well, we tried tracking our spending, but life just got in the way and we couldn’t keep it consistent. If things ever get tight, we’ll hunker down then.” But that’s just kicking the can down a road paved with hidden stress. Eventually, a "surprise" expense or heavy financial decision reveals that we weren't as prepared as originally thought. We avoid facing the discomfort for the sake of "ignorant bliss," but as with any bad habit, the cost of that clarity-avoidance compounds.  As gold rockets toward historic highs, analysts are rounding up the usual suspects: sticky inflation, shifting interest rates, geopolitics, and the maneuvers of central banks. All of which are valid.
Underneath the technical explanations, however, sits a powerful force: gold is acting as a live read on public emotion. When uncertainty and greed take the wheel, gold stops behaving like a commodity and starts behaving like emotional insurance. It has become a primary vehicle for investor anxiety, a way 'do something' when the world feels unpredictable. The result: portfolio allocations designed to feel protective in the moment that can often work against long-term outcomes. At The New Diligence, I spend a lot of time on how psychology quietly drives financial decisions. Few assets capture that dynamic more clearly than gold during periods of stress. It reveals a fundamental truth about our nature: we don't buy 'safety' when it’s cheap and boring; we chase it when the fear is loudest.  William is a 63-year-old who plans to retire next year. His portfolio is heavily concentrated in technology stocks and a handful of individual companies that have delivered spectacular returns over the past decade. He's watched his nest egg grow substantially, far outpacing his more conservative friends who diversified into bonds and international equities.
When his financial advisor gently suggests rebalancing into a more age-appropriate allocation, William pushes back: "Why would I change what's working? These holdings have funded my entire retirement." William believes his success validates his strategy. In reality, he may be falling victim to a classic behavioral trap: the status quo bias. And at this life stage, the stakes are high.  What is it about the flip of the calendar that makes us feel ready to turn a new leaf?
A new year feels like a clean slate. A fresh start. Suddenly, it seems like the right moment to get back to the gym, eat a little better, and finally get our finances in better shape—as if somehow, an arbitrary number can help us mentally separate who we were from who we want to become. It’s one reason financial resolutions are so common in January. Saving more, spending less, and investing more thoughtfully are among the most popular and sincere goals people set. And yet, by February, many of those resolutions have quietly faded. The temptations haven’t changed. Unexpected expenses still show up. Daily life looks a lot like it did last October. So why does this keep happening?  We are taught to measure wealth by what we keep, yet we define ourselves by what we give. During the holidays, this paradox is put to the ultimate test. For some, giving is a grounding act of agency; for others, it is a performative tax that leaves them feeling depleted rather than connected.
The holiday season has a way of exposing the subtle difference between giving that feels joyful and giving that feels heavy. The difference isn’t how much money is involved (though of course, having more money never hurts). It’s what giving represents. True generosity, it turns out, requires a kind of intentionality that holiday pressure can dilute. It's about finding a way to turn giving into what it's meant to be: a meaningful expression of care rather than a demonstration of resource management.  When you hear the word advertisement, what comes to mind?
A TV commercial? Maybe a billboard on the highway or a bus? The painfully unskippable 30 seconds before a YouTube video? For decades, advertising announced itself. And over time, we learned how to ignore it. Popups, sponsored news content, promoted websites. We’ve become increasingly attuned by filtering out the noise. But of course, every time we adapt to a new style of advertisement, a more effective one takes its place. Today, social media has essentially erased the boundary between content and advertisement, making it increasingly difficult to spot an ad six inches from our face. One moment we’re watching a humor-filled reel. The next, we're being pitched products by an influencer in their messy (but familiar) bedroom. We don’t brace ourselves for a sales pitch because it doesn’t feel like one. After all, who expects an ad from someone who looks like a friend? Ads have never been this well camouflaged, and the numbers prove it's working: social media advertising hit $276 billion in 2025 and shows no signs of slowing down¹. Companies are following the returns, and those returns are staggering. In this article, I want to unpack why social media ads are so profitable for companies, how they’re getting increasingly invasive, and what we can actually do about it.  The democratization of investing has been heralded as one of the great financial achievements of the digital age. With just a few quick taps on a phone, virtually anyone can execute trades in milliseconds and track their portfolio in real-time. Apps like Robinhood transformed investing from something distant and complex into an accessible, even thrilling, experience for younger investors.
But with that progress comes a hidden downside. Digital platforms amplify one of the most dangerous biases in investing: Overconfidence. Digital overconfidence is basically a modern manifestation of the classic overconfidence bias that has plagued investors for generations¹. What makes it particularly difficult to navigate today is the way digital trading platforms have engineered features that effectively exploit our vulnerabilities, turning casual investors into overconfident traders who mistake luck for skill and activity for expertise. |
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