Guest post #2 at Get Rich Slowly

Back in July I got a note from J.D. Roth, who was lining up some guest posts to run on Get Rich Slowly while he and his wife were on vacation in France and Italy. I was pleased to be asked once again, and wrote a piece that I ended up being rather pleased with. It went live this morning: Why Now is the Time to Think Long-Term. (Spoiler alert: low interest rates are the reason that now is the time to think long-term.)

About twenty-five years ago (as an example of long-term thinking), I had a whimsical investment idea: Buy some cheap land and plant hardwood trees. The trees wouldn’t be ready to harvest for 100 years or so, but it would have been a cheap investment with (eventually) a fairly large payoff.

It takes a certain perspective to make such a long-term investment. I call it a whimsical idea because I’d never have been able to enjoy the financial return. I was already in my mid-20s at the time. Even if I’d selected the hardwoods for quick maturity, they wouldn’t have been ready until I was well into my 90s.

It’s a topic I’ve been aware of since the early 1980s, when very high interest rates produced a spate of very short-term thinking. (In particular, my dad’s publisher tried to weasel out of a book contract, because it seemed more profitable to invest their money in the money market at a guaranteed 14% than to invest it in a book that might not make so much.)

When rates are high, it doesn’t make any economic sense to think long-term. But when rates are low, long-term projects are suddenly reasonable. Since just now rates are at multi-generational lows, Now is the Time to Think Long-Term.