Episode 27: Have Americans improved their financial lives during Covid? Two studies provide insights.

Financial habits and behaviors changed since the onset of the pandemic. Time will confirm if these changes are more temporal or more permanent.

Here are just a handful of the things that we'll discuss:

Northwestern Mutual’s 2022 Planning & Progress Study found that 60 percent of U.S. adults say that the pandemic has been highly disruptive to the way they manage their finances. But they have taken certain actions to buttress longer-term financial security.
DALBAR’s 2022 Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior (QAIB) report found that the Average Equity Fund Investor finished the year with a return of 18.39 percent versus a Standard & Poors 500 return of 28.71 percent, an investor return gap of 1,032 basis points (bps).
The reports seem to support the idea that emotion costs you money while discipline makes you money.