Exploring the golden ground, false precision, and assumptions

Author

Logan
March 20, 2025

In partnership with

Exploring the golden ground, false precision, and assumptions

Happy Thursday! Thanks for reading Intentional Dollar — where we look at old money ideas through a new perspective.

What’s inside?

  • One idea 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.

Tackle Your Credit Card Debt With 0% Interest Until Nearly 2027 AND Earn 5% Cash Back

Some credit cards can help you get out of debt faster with a 0% intro APR on balance transfers. Transfer your balance, pay it down interest-free, and save money. FinanceBuzz reviewed top cards and found the best options—one even offers 0% APR into 2027 + 5% cash back!

Newsletter launch:

Interested in money + philosophy? Check out our new daily newsletter, The Stoic Ledger. Each morning, we share money wisdom from the sages. It’s a brief newsletter connecting ancient Stoic philosophy to money.

You can sign up for free at www.thestoicledger.com/subscribe.

One idea to experiment with:

The Golden Ground:

Asking for a raise. Asking for a day to work from home. Asking for a change in hours. Monetizing an existing hobby. 

There’s gold in the ground below you. No Western travel required, no fancy tools needed.

We don’t see it because we look elsewhere. We think the grass is green on the other side so we don’t bother looking for the good inside our fence. But what if we dug into the ground below? 

The unexplored regions in our current lot may contain tremendous value. So until we’ve turned each rock and excavated the ground below, who’s to say we don’t already have what we want? 

You’ve been working your job for a while now. You know the employee handbook cold, and you’re painfully intimate with the lack of flexibility to work from home, or take time off beyond your standard two weeks. 

So you stay in the system. You show up and dream about an opportunity that has more flexibility, and on a few trying days, even put feelers out for opportunities elsewhere. 

But let me present a question: have you asked for any flexibility to work from home occasionally? Have you negotiated for an extra few days of time off? 

We often assume that the boundaries of our roles are fixed and unchangeable. Yet we haven’t tried to push them. Everything is up for negotiation even if you think or have heard that it’s not. 

The standard COLA each year doesn’t have to be your fate — you can ask for more. And if the raise isn’t there, ask for the path to get there. 

Before you’ve explored the ground below, don’t walk away looking for better. 

the grass isn’t always greener, so dig into the ground below

Two quotes on false precision:

The precision of a forecast might feel good. Estimating returns to the decimal, illustrating retirement balances to the odd dollar, exacting fair value through a highly tuned DCF model, all examples of false precision. And we use these to fool ourselves into thinking we can predict the future. The more precise, the more accurate, we say. But it isn’t so.

“Some businesses are a lot easier to understand than others, and Charlie and I don't like difficult problems. We'd rather multiply by three than by pi. It's just easier for us.”

Warren Buffett

“Resist the craving for false precision, false certainties, etc.”

Charlie Munger

Three questions on assumptions:

  1. What were my assumptions going into the decision?

  2. What implicit assumptions did I make without labeling them, calling them out, and understanding them?

  3. Were my assumptions narrowed in on the right focal point of the decision? (80/20 analysis on the right weights to focus our assumptions)

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 ground below contains some gold

But we never dig under grass trampled and old

Before you leave for the other side

Look for the things here that hide

Contact Me:

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

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

📚 Join the Duolingo for Investing

📈 Want to learn investing? Check out Blossom, where you can find 50+ hours of Duolingo-style lessons, taught by North America’s largest investing content creators.

⭐️ With a 4.7 rating and ranked an Essential Finance App of 2024 by Apple, Blossom is loved by over 250,000 members.

Reply

or to participate.