Imagine you're walking down the street. A woman approaches and hands you a small piece of paper. You glance down and realize it's a prescription. "Well," you think to yourself, "she was wearing a white coat, so she's probably a doctor."
You then walk into a drugstore where other people wearing white coats are standing behind a counter. They take your piece of paper and ask you to sign a release form that promises you won't sue if you die. You grab your white bag and head out the door thinking, "I'm so glad that woman gave me a prescription."
That's crazy! We'd never do or think this in real life — with one small exception.
We accept random prescriptions for our financial lives all the time. From sound bites on TV to headlines on the Internet, we chase after the latest financial prescriptions, desperately seeking answers to our money problems.
The advice often appears legitimate, even well-intentioned. But there's zero context to help us weigh whether it's right for us. Plus, what sounds like a good idea one week may be contradicted by another prescription the next.
So why are we so willing to follow a different standard of care with our financial health? Why don't we pursue a diagnosis first? I believe we're scared.
If we slow down or stop to ask questions, we may discover some uncomfortable truths. We may discover that we don't really understand our current financial reality. We may discover some serious underlying problems, like that neglected student loan we hoped would just disappear.
Any one of these outcomes can feel really scary. So we don't slow down, and we convince ourselves that eventually we'll stumble onto the right prescription. But that's not going happen.
