It is not for the lack of information, or even knowledge that many of us experience challenges with our finances. The knowledge is readily available, many times for free. Even for those who are capable of paying a premium for more exposure it is still possible to fail. Perhaps the most tragic of all the financial collapses we might experience comes as a result of what many see as basic finance 101 - saving for the winters.

For many of us prosperity is a seasonal thing. While these days the onus has been on wealth creation and sustenance, there are always periods where we experience inevitable booms and declines. Perhaps with the advancement of our knowledge base there is a slow-down of this trend, but it does happen for the most parts. Seasons of significant boom still happens and they can range from anything from a few months to years, but they'd eventually be met by a period of decline.

When we hit ATHs on the Hive platform for the first time, I wonder if people thought much of such a cycle. There is always the issue of failing to identify a boom when it does happen which I only realized when I got older. We could simply take such periods as normal, when in actual events they are periodic and are meant to be treated as such. Maybe because we are optimistic by nature there is the tendency to start thinking such times could actually be the norm, or worse, lead to another potentially damaging belief.

The tendency to think the good times last forever is maybe inbuilt in us, brings out that caged irrational optimism. Reality is that they don't, or rarely ever do. For many of us it shouldn't come as a shock, but it does. When the supply of something good suddenly stops there is usually a period of unacceptance and optimism about a reversal. It is because many of us rather choose to enjoy the boom periods only when we should also be doing something very important - preparing.

Conclusion

We don't prepare actually because of a lack of discipline, not information. There are people living on $2 a day in parts of the World who still manage to scrape some savings together, much less some of us that find ourselves in some sort of abundance. I reflect on some choices the past year which could have been better and there definitely has been a slide in discipline. I hope I have my helmet on when the inevitable winters come.