Bet on Black? or Red?
Capital Thinking • Issue #1152 • View online
A friend wants to pay off his mortgage in the next three years. He’s got two young kids. He’s younger than me.
Meanwhile, I refinanced into a new thirty year mortgage. If he pays off his home debt it will be quite an accomplishment.
-Mike Dariano
Roulette with Bobby
Mike Dariano | The Waiter's Pad:
Bobby’s plan is different from mine. But I don’t know that he’s wrong. Personal finance is more like cooking than baking. We looked at, for instance, a 15 or 30 year mortgage?
In a way Bobby and I are at the roulette wheel. He’s bet on black. I’ve bet on red. One of us will be right, but we can’t know ahead of time.
Most of personal finance is reducing the range of choices to just good options. It feels like we’ve both done that.
The analogy of roulette also works because rather than red or black, the ball could land on green. Despite planning, we both could be wrong.
It’s also important that we have designed our systems. Sometimes we think knowledge leads to action, but around here we know that design rules the day.
Bobby has a plan to pay off his mortgage early – that plan is the design. Our family has automatics contributions – that’s our design.
“If someone says financial literacy at a party I basically give them a thirty minute lecture. The idea is that in a perfect world, if someone is taught about FICO and the impact on their life, they would take actions to improve their FICO score. This is just not what researchers have found – and it’s really robust…the punchline is that environment matters.” – Kristen Berman, All the Hacks, October 2021
Roulette, as an investment, is not in the range-of-good-choices. But as an analogy it fits nice. Prepare and pick from prime possibilities but remember the ball might not bounce any of those ways.