Exploring the hook, links, and frustration

Author

Logan
May 30, 2024

In partnership with

In partnership with

Welcome to the Intentional Dollar weekly newsletter — great work taking this small step to move your money forward. I’m Logan, a Certified Financial Planner™, and I’m excited you’re here!

What’s inside?

  • One tool to experiment with

  • Two quotes from others

  • Three questions to dig deeper

  • Four lines of poetry for the point

Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. These weekly posts represent my simple thoughts, a few quotes, and some questions — for educational purposes only.

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One tool to experiment with:

The Hook:

A ripple cascades across a calm pond after the wrinkled fisherman casts his baited line. It’s an ominous sign to the experienced fish, yet pleasant to unsuspecting eyes.

With weight and hook, the bait drops to the depths where the prize fish swim. Schools of busy fish see the bait, but their haste impedes a visual of the hook. What a day, they think, free lunch. Manna from heaven at an opportunistic time. So these unsuspecting fish act on that old ancestral instinct and take the bait. But the bite proves a painful one.

The free floating food was a deceptive lure, tethered to a scale-piercing hook. Hook, line, and sinker; that’s all you need to catch a fish.

We know this. What we don’t know, and what we let our egos fool us from seeing, is that we are the fish. All of us. And we’re swimming in a great pond with mine fields of fake bait, sharp hooks, and misaligned incentives; all with the intent to catch us, and pull us from the water of life.

How can you avoid being caught?

The correct approach is to trace the incentives. And like bait on a hook on a line, you can follow the incentives to get to the real source, the real intent.

I should note that not all fishermen in our metaphor are bad. Some of these reelers are out to help us. Their assistance can pull us from the dangerous waters and deposit us into safer homes. Those are the lines that lead to right-aligned incentives.

However, since survival is the primary goal, we must avoid the fish fry type of fishermen at all costs. With the small cost of a few careful questions and a little time, incentive tracing yields outsized returns.

Swimming around the bait, with our time and questions, we will discern the quality of the person behind the pole — we can see intention, incentive, insincerity, or ineptitude — we can see more.

The circle swimming is our due diligence process.

Due diligence is the simple act of investigating an opportunity. When firms engage in financial transactions there’s rigorous question asking and information sharing, and this diligence makes a lot of sense.

Without proper diligence you can’t make an informed decision. Without an informed decision, you don’t have the foggiest idea if you’re biting hook or sustenance; if you’re headed for better waters or the frying pan.

The best way to conduct your diligence when someone is selling a financial product is to find out their incentives. You have to be forward. You have to ask them how they get paid in this relationship because for some, they get paid an ungodly fee regardless of what happens to you. And that’s the wrong relationship to be in.

You want the incentives aligned. You want someone that has your best interest at heart, and most of the time, that’s not someone who hangs an expensive product on a hook and waits for you to bite.

Next time someone offers you a free lunch, or a steak dinner, see the bait for what it is.

follow the incentives behind the bait

All things are connected. We exist in an ecosystem where the things we do, or don’t do, have a great impact on an unfathomable field. Money things aren’t just money things, they’re attached to all facets of your existence.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.“

John Muir

“But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.”

Alan Watts

Three questions on frustration:

  1. What typically frustrates me with money?

  2. How do I respond when this trigger arises? What do I say, do, think?

  3. What if my current response to these frustrating events is the obstacle preventing me from getting through them?

Which question stuck with you? Questions like these are spotlights for the mind. Reply to this email and let me know which one shined light on a previously dark cave.

Four lines of poetry for the point:

The hook hangs hidden, masked by savory bait,

The prudent fish will swim around,

Trace incentives up and down,

Then decide which times to wait.

Contact Me:

Content ideas, questions? Reply to this email or reach out to me at [email protected]

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. These weekly posts represent my simple thoughts, a few quotes, and some questions — for educational purposes only.

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