Practical Lessons for Your Financial Life (Collection)

Getting Attached to Things and Not Wanting to Sell

Sometimes investors hesitate to sell investments for sentimental or personal reasons, even when the financial reasons and original logic for holding these investments no longer apply.

Adam and Louise were very attached to their house in the northeastern mountains, and they wanted to keep it, even though the house was costing them $70,000 a year to maintain, and they weren’t using it in the way they had when their children were younger. They thought, “We want to keep it for the kids!” But the kids weren’t using it either. One lived in California, one in New York City, and one in New Mexico. How much sense did it make to keep a house worth $1.3 million in the hopes that one or more of the kids ...