Amid a particularly bad day on the stock market a couple of weeks ago, I got an email from one of my longest-standing clients with the subject “We are fine - read at your leisure.”

If I asked you to explain to a 5th grader the basics of how people make money investing in real estate, you probably wouldn’t miss a beat: buy a house, collect rent, subtract your expenses and the rest is profit.  Have the average person try to explain how the stock market works however and the answer will likely be about as helpful as asking Kim Kardashian to give her interpretation of campaign finance reform.

George Carlin made a great observation: most people will admit to being bad at math, but no one wants to own up to being a bad driver.  The problem is most of us are much, MUCH worse at math than we even admit to, and it ends up working against us when it comes to investing. 

Last fall, as my wife was busy getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner, she asked me to grab something out of the fridge. I obliged, and while doing so, something pink and blue on the top shelf caught my eye.

If you’ve picked up a newspaper recently and managed to make it past the insanity of the campaign headlines, you might have noticed talk of the “Brexit.” If you’ve made the mistake of watching any CNBC lately, you’ve certainly seen the talking heads using it as fodder for their fear-mongering strategy to boost ratings.