What I’m doing: Nicholas Gaffney
TEXT OF STORY
Tess Vigeland: For the last few weeks around Marketplace we’ve been asking, “What are you doing?” Yes, you — and others who are deciding what changes to make in how they manage their money during this time of turmoil.
Today we check in with a listener who’s learned to shut out the noise.
Nicholas Gaffney: My name is Nicholas Gaffney. I’m a partner in a public relations firm in San Francisco where I live with my wife Marie and son Quinlan.
I’m feeling fine because I think that I’ve exhausted the emotions connected to the financial markets.
A few weeks ago when the markets started to become frenetic, I was very tense and traumatized — probably I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t believe that so many people could lose so much of what they worked so hard for so quickly.
Really, I didn’t sleep very well for a couple days; I would check the computer or my Treo constantly. I would refresh the Google business page or the Yahoo finance page that would show the Dow — you know, a hundred times a day would not be an exaggeration. And probably when I was out and about, which a couple days I was traveling when the crisis was at its peak, I would be checking my Treo 200 times a day.
And I couldn’t take it anymore. I just had had my fill. I couldn’t experience any more anxiety or any more shock. I was done. So now what I’ve been doing is I’ve been investing, a regular amount almost every day that I’m doing because one, I believe in the system, and two, it at least gives me some sort of comfort that I’m at least making the best of an unfortunate situation.
And there’s a quote that I found the other day that I thought was appropriate for this. It’s by C.S. Lewis and it goes like this: “Faith is the art of holding onto things your reason once accepted despite your changing moods.” I mean, it would be so easy now to just say this system is terrible and to just walk away from it because it’s frightening, but I had faith and I think a lot of people in the country, in the world, had faith in our system and I think that we’re going to make some changes in that faith we found to be something that was good and true.
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