I had a meeting with a statistical collaborator today, a resident who really was trying hard to understand his study from a statistical perspective. But Resident Ron was struggling, for a couple of reasons. One, like many people, he’s not (or thinks he’s not) that naturally analytical. Two, he’s never been taught the big picture of statistics well. Three, even without considering (1) and (2), he didn’t actually understand his specific study; this was compounded by Four, I think the coauthors or conference audiences were asking a bunch of questions that were very off-base, due to their own lack of understanding, and that was further confusing Resident Ron.

He did a good job today of expressing what it was he wasn’t understanding, and what he wanted to learn about, so that I could hone in on one small conceptual idea. And then I could draw:

These drawings could have taken me only a minute or two at most to sketch. But I took about 20 minutes to slowly construct them, explaining how they were related to eachother, what they meant, and how that tied in to his question. (In some of these sessions, collaborators ask for my drawings, or to take a picture of them.) By the end of it, Ron no longer felt stressed that he couldn’t pick the right numbers out of his hundreds of pages of statistical output I’d provided him, or defend the methodology of the study the next time he was questioned at a conference or by a co-author. Instead, now Ron understood the basic concepts, and trusted me to pick the relevant numbers out for him based on our discussions. That’s the great value of the educator+expert combination!

This is also a lot like when I teach whitewater kayaking. The goal of our teaching process is two fold, beyond “let’s bring everyone home safe” and “we should all have fun!”.

• First, we teach concepts using the “whole”, “part”, “whole” strategy.
• Second, you can only tackle improving one piece of a maneuver at a time.

That “whole, part, whole” portion goes like this: We demonstrate the whole movement, we give some key points about making it happen, and then we repeat the demonstration of the whole movement again. This doesn’t, can’t, cover every aspect of when and how and why this maneuver is used; that’s what the coaching process in practice is about. But can you imagine if we tried? If we focused on everything, all at once? I’d sound like I was herding cats!

• “Get your paddle shaft more vertical!”
• “Get your paddle more horizontal!”
• “Sit up straighter!”
• “More boat tilt!”
• “Less boat tilt!”
• “Rotate your paddle shaft more!”
• “Rotate your paddle shaft less!”
• …

If I couldn’t be more organized, and specific, my students would give up in frustration (and I’d be left with no next generation to paddle with).

Now how do both of those parallel financial planning?

First, nobody goes into dealing with their finances as a natural. Taxes, compound interest, legal code, none of it is intuitive. Second, it’s complex, and changing. Third, most people haven’t had any well designed, comprehensive education on it. Fourth, people are scared of it, just like most people are periodically afraid on the river; and if they aren’t, that’s probably a sign they’re overconfident and they should be afraid!

Nobody helping you with your finances should make you feel dumb for not having all the answers. In fact, they should be glad you’re engaged enough to have questions and to want to know the answers! Make sure you’re connecting with someone who will teach, draw simple educational pictures – slowly enough for you to follow, give you enough background to feel confident in your decisions without losing you in the complexity. The complexity is necessary for all the little details, but the details are why you have an expert in your corner in the first place. That expert should be able to help you feel like someone with their sea legs, rather than someone on a boat on their first day at sea.

But some parts of life don’t feel natural. Novice downhill skiers want to sit back on their heels on a steep slope. Novice upsidedown kayakers want to bring their head to the surface as soon as possible, instead of committing to keeping it down when rolling. Novices with their finances may want to avoid paying any taxes today, triggering a much larger lifetime tax bill for themselves.

We’re going to have a couple of the next posts dealing with some graphics, to help you wrap your head around some financial concepts you may have encountered but not previously understood. Give it a try with me, I think you’ll find it’s not as bad as you are worried it will be.