61 | Complexity is Sexy

This post is Part 1 of 3 of the "Trusting Simplicity Instead of Increasing Complexity" series.

Complexity is sexy for the person seeking it because it appears to cover over all the potential faults.

Complexity is sexy for the person offering it because it sells itself.

Complexity has been an unfortunate hallmark of the financial services industry since its earliest days.

From investments to projections of the future to insurance products, on the surface they seem different, but the underlying theme remains the same - more complexity is the only answer to a complex world and our complex feelings.

The reality is that complexity isn’t a solution, but more a symptom that we've abandoned the simple concepts that drive 95+% of the outcome.

It's a little bit like reading the textbook in school and understanding the governing principles of a topic. Once you have a baseline understanding of them, they seem relatively simple, even a little like common sense.

Then as a rookie you move into some role that is governed by those concepts, but you're too far down the org chart to see them in action and everything feels more complex than you ever imagined.

If you can't ever orient and move past the complexity of the rookie tactics and responsibilities, then you never see the "other side" where the simple concepts truly do govern everything.

Complexity is a cheap substitute for real financial well being and it torpedoes our relationship with money for at least a couple of reasons...

It's easy to assume that if you can't understand something then the person promoting it must be smarter than you are and therefore "right".

At best, this undermines your confidence and at its worst it allows many an "advisor" to continue profiting off of innocent naivete without actually improving well being.

It's also easy to think that if it's complex, then it must lead to "more".

This one is a double whammy because complexity might not (usually doesn't!) lead to "more", and even if it did, "more" isn’t always what it's cracked up to be.

Complexity is the easy way out and we all know that the easy way doesn't work in the long run.

Simple is what works, but simple is harder than it seems…