When Something Just “Doesn’t Feel Right?”

“I don’t know…something just doesn’t feel right,” you mumble through your mask to your primary care doctor while sitting on the examination table under a flickering fluorescent light in a room decorated with anatomical charts and hand-sanitizer dispensers. After listening to your heart and your lungs, the doctor diagnoses your feelings of worry as a mild condition that is easily treatable but could become serious if a proper treatment regimen isn’t followed. The doctor gives two treatment plans: one coming from the New England Journal of Medicine and the other from a health magazine that can be purchased at your local convenience store. Which plan do you choose?

The health magazines are filled with tips and tricks, such as how to burn body fat, jump start the body’s metabolic rate and build immune system strength. And they might even work sometimes. If you want to choose the treatment plan with the highest odds of success, it might give you more confidence to know that the medical journal, and its recommendations, are based on decades of data collected from research studies performed by medical experts and peer-reviewed by the medical community.

We face the same decision when it comes to investing. Numerous publications tout the latest investment trends and implore their readers to jump on the bandwagon or miss out on the impending financial windfall. And to their credit—sometimes they work. But just like our physical health, we can place more confidence in an evidence-based approach to support our long-term investment plans and ultimately our financial well-being.