Where Confidence Should Lie

This is tmrw — a weekly note on money, decisions, and what tends to matter over time.

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“Dad, I can see the moon!”

I was spending time with my middle child and my only son, Bode, on the tennis court a few weeks back when he stopped, pointed up, and said, “Dad! I can see the moon.”

I looked up to my right, and there was the silver disk glowing against the dark blue sky. I looked back down at him, questioning the very thing I was about to say, and said, “Bode, there are people who want to put factories on the moon.”

It’s incredible that there are entrepreneurs who have the confidence to say it makes sense for shareholders to build data centers on the moon. When I was looking at it, I couldn’t help but think about how far away it actually is. Over 200,000 miles. And yet, here we are, seriously discussing the capital required to put them on the moon.

And while that is happening, the supposedly “SaaScopolypse” is happening as Wall Street questions the very technology that got us to 2026. Elon Musk cancels production of the most important electric car of the 21st century because he wants to focus on robots. Capital is being deployed at scale as the land rush for market share heats up.

All of that is happening in your portfolio, mine too. I talk with investors of all types regularly. The feeling I get is a combination of hesitation, opportunistic thinking, and “what does this mean for it all?”

It being life as we know it.

Not that you and I are going to stop taking walks in 2036, but what will it be like when you see a robot taking out the trash at a barbeque spot at a local park?

I titled our Year Ahead piece “The Year Before the Future” – it’s the simplest way to explain where we are at.

You see the path, you see the door in front of you, you see it opening, you see yourself getting closer, but you don’t know what’s on the other side.

And with that comes a question: where should confidence be right now as this happens?

Should it be in the markets, should it be in a political party, should it be in people, should it be in your ability, where?

Part of this reflection came from a conversation I had with a client. We were walking through our year ahead views, talking about the economy, markets, and how we are allocating capital. At one point, he stopped and asked a very simple, very honest question:

“What happens when robots do everyone’s jobs?”

It’s worth saying this out loud. I don’t actually know exactly how all of this plays out. I don’t know when these changes arrive, or what they look like in practice. No one does.

Confidence is simply this: trust you’ve decided to place somewhere.

You don’t just have confidence; you put it somewhere, into markets, leaders, plans, or people. You already do this with money, placing assets across accounts and strategies to create income, growth, and liquidity.

You place your confidence somewhere, just as you place your assets across asset classes to provide income, growth, and liquidity.

This placement is critical for families approaching the biggest financial transition of their lives: the day the paycheck stops and retirement begins.

For many high-earning families within 5–10 years of retirement, accumulation is largely behind you. The main question is no longer “How much more can I make?” but “What does this need to support, year after year, from here?”

And when your own life is shifting while the world is also rapidly changing, you can get this odd mixture of hesitation, curiosity, opportunity, and fear, especially when headlines, AI, and politics all seem to be accelerating at once.

That’s where the placement of confidence matters.

When I put all of this together, the moon comment, the robots, our client who asked, “What happens when the robots do everyone’s jobs?”—I keep coming back to this:

Confidence is the placement of trust. Investing is the placement of assets. Retirement is the placement of assets designed to send trust back to you every month in the form of income and disciplined growth.

Confidence, especially in the second half of life, doesn’t come from predicting the future. It doesn’t come from being early to the next technology or perfectly positioned for whatever narrative wins next. It comes from a structure for your assets, the people sitting across the table from you, and a process that keeps working whether the story of the day is robots, elections, or interest rates.

The stronger those three are, the smoother this transition becomes.

You don’t need the world to slow down, or perfect clarity about what AI, elections, or markets will do next. You need a structure that stays steady while the rest of the world figures itself out, and the right people and process around it.

That’s where confidence should lie.

If you’d like to talk through how this applies to your own financial life, you can learn more about our work at Fjell Capital here.

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More next week.