The Catholic Case for Boring, Patient Investing

Tree on hill changing through winter, spring, summer, and autumn
~ Rich Pascual ~ Leave a comment

I have a confession to make: I find “boring” reassuring. Give me a quiet Saturday, a pot of coffee, and an investment plan that does not require me to check my phone every twelve minutes. My younger self wanted a financial life with plot twists. My current self would like fewer plot twists, please.

That is one way into the Catholic case for patient investing. It is not a promise that markets will behave, or that every fund deserves a halo. It is a question of formation: What kind of person does my money practice me into becoming?

Patience is not passivity

Patient investing still makes choices. You decide what the money is for, how much risk you can bear, and what you are unwilling to support. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ investment guidelines hold those pieces together: responsible financial stewardship, a reasonable return, prudence about risk, and attention to human dignity and the common good.

That is a sturdier picture than “maximize everything.” A return matters because resources support real obligations: a family, a parish, a future act of generosity. But the return is not the only question. The old Catholic word is stewardship, which means the money is entrusted to us, not enthroned over us.

Slow is a strategy

In practical terms, boring often looks like regular contributions, broad diversification, and a long time horizon. Investor.gov defines dollar-cost averaging as investing equal portions at regular intervals, regardless of market ups and downs. You buy more when prices are lower and less when they are higher. It is not magic. It is a way to keep one anxious afternoon from running the whole household.

FINRA explains that asset allocation and diversification can help manage investment risk by spreading money among and within asset classes. That does not make losses impossible; it does make the portfolio less dependent on one heroic bet. Even the phrase “heroic bet” sounds like something that ends with a lesson and a repair bill.

None of this means ignoring companies, communities, or conscience. A patient investor can read a fund’s holdings, ask how a manager votes, and decide which harms are incompatible with the family’s principles. Patience gives discernment time to work. Speculation often gives impatience a costume.

What is being formed?

What happened? I put money into a future I cannot see, then watched prices wiggle as if they knew I was watching. What did it mean? The account was never just a scoreboard; it was training my attention, my appetite, and my sense of enough. What can I carry forward? A simple rule: automate what serves the plan, review what deserves discernment, and refuse to confuse excitement with wisdom.

Perhaps the most countercultural investment move is not finding the next miracle. It is becoming the kind of person who can keep a promise across an ordinary Tuesday. What is your money asking you to practice: patience, prudence, generosity, or a little less phone-checking?

The Examen and the Expense Report: A Better Way to End the Day

Open journal with handwritten notes, lit candle, smartphone, books, and cup of tea on wooden table at dusk
~ Rich Pascual ~ Leave a comment

I have two end-of-day rituals, at least in theory. One is spiritual: the examen, that quiet Ignatian habit of looking back over the day with God. The other is financial: opening the bank app and asking where the money went. One sounds holy. The other sounds like a small punishment invented by a spreadsheet.

But they have more in common than I expected. Both are practices of attention. Both ask us to stop guessing and look honestly at the day we actually lived—not the day we intended to live, or the budget we intended to keep.

The daily review is not a courtroom

The Jesuits describe the Ignatian Examen as a prayerful review: become aware of God’s presence, give thanks, notice what happened, and look toward tomorrow. The point is not to produce a perfect scorecard. It is to become more awake to where we were alive, distracted, generous, anxious, or quietly carried.

A financial review works best with the same posture. Start with the facts: the grocery run, the subscription renewal, the restaurant charge that seemed harmless until it joined its twelve little cousins. Then ask a gentler question than “What is wrong with me?” Ask: “What was I seeking?” Convenience? Rest? Belonging? A reward after a long day? The numbers are not a moral verdict. They are clues.

Attention turns into agency

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recommends tracking spending for at least two weeks, or even a month, so patterns become visible. That is a wonderfully unglamorous form of freedom. You cannot choose what to change until you can see what is happening.

This is where the spiritual and financial reviews meet. In the examen, I might notice that a certain conversation left me impatient. In the ledger, I might notice that the same kind of day ends with delivery food and late-night shopping. Neither observation is the whole story. Together, they might reveal a need for a better pause before I reach for the easiest relief.

And “better” does not have to mean dramatic. Investor.gov suggests keeping track of income and expenses and including savings in the picture. For tonight, that could mean writing down three purchases, one gratitude, and one small adjustment for tomorrow. No overhaul. No financial monasticism. Just a little light.

What happened, what it meant, what to carry forward

What happened? I spent the day making choices, some deliberate and some automatic. What did it mean? My attention—and my money—moved toward whatever felt urgent, comforting, or important in the moment. What can I carry forward? A five-minute review, done without self-contempt, can turn a blur into a pattern. A pattern can become a choice.

Tonight, before closing the banking app, try one question from each practice: “Where did I receive a gift today?” and “What did my spending say mattered?” The answers may not match perfectly. That is not failure. That is information—and information is a decent place to begin again.

The Riskiest Servant in the Bible Might Be the Hero You Forgot

Single coin buried in soil, light above
~ Rich Pascual ~ Leave a comment

I always assumed the “bad guy” in the Parable of the Talents was obvious — the servant who buried his money in the ground, out of laziness. Then I actually sat with the text again in Matthew 25:14-30, and I noticed something I’d skipped for twenty years: the master doesn’t scold him for being lazy. He scolds him for being afraid.

“I knew you were a hard man,” the servant says, basically accusing his boss of being the kind of guy who’d fire you over a bad quarter. So he did the safest thing available — he buried the money, kept it exactly intact, and handed it back penny for penny. No loss. No embarrassment. No risk.

And that’s the servant who gets called “wicked and slothful.”

Here’s the part that stopped me mid-coffee: the two servants who doubled their money took real risk to do it. First-century “trading” wasn’t a savings account — it meant loaning capital, backing ventures, betting the harvest would come in. As The Catholic Herald points out, this parable isn’t really a finance seminar in disguise. It’s a parable about fear disguised as caution.

I think about this every time I explain to my kids why we don’t keep all our savings under the mattress — and also every time I catch myself doing the spiritual version of burying a talent. Not using a gift because someone might criticize it. Not writing the song, not sending the blog post, not saying the prayer out loud, because staying safe feels responsible.

Ray Stedman’s reading of this parable puts it plainly: the sin here isn’t losing money. It’s refusing to risk anything at all in service of something bigger than yourself.

That reframes stewardship for me. I used to think good stewardship meant protecting what I’ve been given — keep it safe, don’t waste it, hand it back in one piece. Turns out the parable’s definition of good stewardship is closer to the opposite: put it to work, accept that work carries risk, and trust the One who gave it to you in the first place.

What happened: I reread a parable I thought I already understood.

What it meant: the “safe” choice in the story wasn’t safe at all — it was the only choice that produced zero fruit.

What I’m carrying forward: the next time I feel the urge to bury something — a dollar, a talent, an idea — I want to ask whether I’m being prudent, or just scared with better branding.

(And if you’re the one in your family who still keeps cash in a coffee can — I see you. I’m not judging. I’m just going to gently suggest an index fund.)

Eyes on Autumn

~ Rich Pascual ~ Leave a comment

Looking back to December 2005, I noticed the first post on the “Halo Halo Life” blog had a dead link for one of my photoblog entries.  A little research turns up that “LynnInTokyo“, the photographer for the piece had changed the terms of her copyright and disabled embedded links to her work.  To add to the tragedy, she had also lost control of her account which got hacked and three years of her photography work was lost.

The good news is that her site on Flickr is back up and the photo I originally referenced was one of the select few that she decided to restore.  I replaced the embedded link with a direct link to her photo page and also added a new embedded photo that could show on the blog post itself.

Autumn Fire on the Treetops
Autumn Fire on the Treetops

NEW In Flickr… Embedded photo linking has been upgraded.  I rushed into this and didn’t check if I could still retain the original embedded linking process which was much simpler than the script that we now have to paste within our page code.

Hyperspace Chewie!
Hyperspace Chewie!

This is the original embedded linking look.  Flickr used to generate the code automatically when an “Blog This” link was selected.  I like the new linking look and will convert as I go as the original method still seems to be honored by Flickr’s servers.  Either way, with attribution and observance of the photog’s copyright guidelines it seems possible to keep these older posts alive.  Ten years old!  Whoot!

It would be nice to slowly replace these photos with my own but it is nice to maintain a symbiotic ecosystem where I share an alternative use and interpretation of the visual works of other artists.

Untitled

~ Rich Pascual ~ Leave a comment

Retelling the stories that bring people together.

Do you think that makes sense?  It tells us of your intentions.  Is it necessary that we weep?  No sir, I meant to include joy, relief, pain, grief, the pulling emotions of what reminds us as the planetside wanderers that we’re not alone.  In all the stories we like to tell and retell, the greatest character we enjoy telling of is ourselves.  So in your searches for intelligent lifeforms, don’t forget yourselves sapient ones; knowing and in the learning of ourselves the in ourselves we find our ails.  Loneliness it is.

We have one another, you know.

Tsk.  In the world we declare that we are connected, but I say jaded and discontent intentionentally… divided.  I say rage for that night under stars and works of fire.  Rage for the heart that struggles to bring things together.  In parts, we are nothing.  Apart meant for only tenants in little cages that captures our souls, entangled.