In recent years we have been conditioned to believe that anything is possible. Indeed, miracles have happened. The Internet, cell phones, social media, networked computers, online shopping have changed the world beyond recognition. These advances have changed so much and become so ubiquitous that we take them for granted. But perhaps because of these big changes, we expect miracles everywhere.
Cheaper, faster, easier is the rallying cry of technology and much of the time it delivers. But not always. Usually we have to compromise on some of these things. Easier for example. These days, it seems, everything beyond a pencil comes with a thick user manual and the use is not self-evident.
I’ve been particularly struck by television advertising. Many service businesses advertise better, cheaper, easier and more personalized. Usually, some of these claims, but not all, may be true.
One real estate company advertises that if you answer a few simple questions, it can give you a personalized quote on your house and arrange a transaction. Now, they may be able to do something if you answer a few simple questions, but they certainly can’t give you a personalized recommendation based on a handful of answers.
A brokerage firm boasts that they can make investing easy. And, indeed, they have. But they have hoodwinked a generation of naïve investors, convincing them that ease of use equates to success. If your goal is to easily do transactions, that’s fine. But if your goal is to save and invest and build wealth, ease of transactions is irrelevant at best and likely counter-productive. Flushing money down the toilet is easy too but unlikely to be a recipe for amassing wealth.
Google is one of these miracles. A majority of people around the world can no longer get through a single day without Google. It has unlocked more information for more people than perhaps any development in history. And, yet, even Google is no guarantee that our questions will lead to good answers. If the question is simple, we will get the information we need in seconds. But for more complex questions, we often do not get satisfactory answers. More importantly, often times, we do not know the right questions to ask and Google cannot supply answers if we don’t know the questions.
For the right questions, I turn to experts. When I go to a good doctor or lawyer, often I find that the question I arrived with was not the important one, the one that I should have been asking. An expert can frame the important questions, and with that help, often, we can supply the right answer. I have become sophisticated about medicine the hard way and yet I’ve been struck by how many times I haven’t had a clue about the most important ways of treating my conditions. Perhaps the years of study and work in the field — expertise-– do matter.
In my field of personal finance and investing, I find that rarely do people address the important or critical questions or bring perspective to their situation. Oftentimes they’ll ask how to do something when the more important questions are why or what, when and where, which need to precede how.
