If you’re like me then you’re not quite done losing your mind over the Steelers incredible, titanic, preposterous implosion that took place Sunday night.
After recovering from the shock after the game, like many, my mind turned to the question of what is next for the Steelers.
The steelers put themselves in quite the pickle for next year. The team has 16 players hitting the unrestricted free agent market. Of those, 9 are current starters. On the other side of that is the elephant in the room or more like a giraffe really, Ye Olde Ben and his mind boggling 41.5 million dollars in salary cap space he would eat up if he played next year.
On the radio, many were purporting on what the Steelers needed to do to get better and some prominent voices were pulling to let Big Ben play out that last year of his contract. I tend to disagree with that idea. When the radio host was going through the options for keeping Ben around I wanted to scream out “what’s the point!?”.
While I was ranting to Aaron on the topic later that day, we realized that this situation is not unlike the ones we all find ourselves in trying to plan our financial lives.
In the Steelers situation, the right decision hinges completely on what the team is trying to do. Is their goal to not hurt Ben’s feelings, be as competitive as possible next year, or start a rebuild that’s coming no matter what you do next year?
That overarching decision will make all the chips fall into place for what they need to do with personnel in the short term.
This is exactly the type of choice we’re faced with every time we invest. What’s the point of putting our money at risk? Once we know why we’re investing, accepting what comes along with reaching that goal is much easier.
A wise person once said to us that the market isn’t the problem, it’s the solution. Investing with a purpose identifies the “problem” we want to solve, and we have the stock market help our finances to meet that goal.
So all you investors could teach the Steelers a lesson this offseason. They need to identify what their goal is first, then pick the proper investments to get them there. I just hope they make the right moves so we don’t have to deal with losing like that to the Browns again for a very long time.