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Exploring reverse thinking, books, and false precision

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:}

Reverse Thinking:

It’s a common filter to focus on the things that should be done with money — predicated on what should I do to make my money better?

Today we are flipping that question on its head, inverting. Inverting is the process of changing the question up to aim for the same solution, from a different angle.

You’ve likely engaged in this type of thinking when working through a maze. The maze presents a host of paths that trip you up and guide you into immovable walls. You can go back to the start and try again, or you jump to the end and work backwards, “what path gets me to this point?”

The money path can be followed by taking the traditional careful, correct steps, and it can also be followed in another unique way — you walk on the path by ensuring you don’t step off the path. When we pencil out the things that get us off the path, it will highlight the actions to avoid.

Reverse thinking. Invert. What should we not do? And this is a good thinking tool to have around.

Listing out the kind of false steps that send you tumbling off the edge, straight down into the rocky mess of money pain, is a way to stay on the path. By avoiding the things that wreck you, by definition you’re left doing the things that will advance you forward.

Think of this in terms of life advice you would share with a friend. As an example, you could advise a friend to always be honest. The message is clear, but not as convicting and coherent as its inverse — “don’t lie.” There’s a subtle difference in the messaging and the effect it has.

You don’t have to think of all the ways you can be honest, instead think of honesty as a function of not lying.

“If I don’t lie, I’m being honest.”

This is much cleaner and easier to apply than a subset of messy conditional rules, facilitated by reversing your thinking.

So in this spirit, let’s create a list that will make our money worse:

• Spend all the money I make

• Use credit when I can’t afford something

• Start investing when I’m more established, later on

• Buy nice things because other people have them

• Do nothing because I don’t know where to start

• Compare my financial picture to others

• Spend now based on assumed income later

• Don’t ever look at how much money I’ve spent

• Find a few speculative stocks and put all my money in them

• Avoid building a cash buffer

• Use spending to artificially inflate happiness

• Use as many buy now pay later schemes as I can to afford something

• Only keep cash because I don’t trust investments

• Loan all of my money to family and friends

• Take all of Uncle Jimmy’s advice because he always talks investments

What else can you think of? Charlie Munger called this “thinking in reverse,” taking Carl Jacobi’s famous line, “one should invert, always invert.”

Sometimes this is more prescriptive than thinking in the “do’s” because inversion gives a new angle to see the problem. A different set of solutions, some that might help you improve your money.

_{Two quotes on books:}

Stretch your mind with a good book.

_{Three questions on false precision:}

1. Where am I wasting resources trying to be more precise than I need to? Projections, estimates, budgets, etc.

2. What’s the most I stand to gain from this extra effort? Is the incremental gain worth the cost?

3. What would it look like if I reduced the inputs to 80% of the current load?

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:}

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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.