“I don’t have a crystal ball, but …” Holy hocus-pocus, how many times have we heard that?!?

Well, we actually do have a crystal ball … an expensive, top-rated model. But the darn thing don’t work. We’ve had it examined by several experts … adjusted, repositioned, reprogrammed, recalibrated, cleaned and polished. Still no foretelling, no telling of any kind, nothing. So, we have turned it into a hopefully harmless conversation piece, an attractive but useless financial relic.

Trying to predict the future is un-necessary for, and sometimes detrimental to, successful financial decision-making and planning. By its very nature, the future is unknown, unknowable, uncertain. And that’s just fine. And a fact that we would all do well to get used to.

Alas, some of us don’t like that reality, even to the point of trying to deny it at times. But, imagine how different, how boring Life would be if we already knew what was going to happen before it actually happened.

Still, various so-called financial experts make a lot of money and a lot of extra confusion by offering an endless stream of predictions, often about short-term fluctuations of little or no importance in the long run. And, these predictions are often wrong, but soon forgotten and replaced by new ones.

To mangle Sir Walter Scott’s famous words, “Oh, what tangled tales they sow, when first they believe they know.” Or, as has been re-quipped many times over the years, economists have predicted nine of the last five recessions.

Finally, not to be left out, we offer a rare permanent prediction … Somehow everything is probably going to be relatively okay, providence permittin’ and the creek don’t rise.