The Problem with the Pepper in Your Soup.

I cook all of the meals around our house.  I’ve always loved to cook, and my wife doesn’t like to at all.  I’ve eased up on my “dining rules” a bit over the years though.  If you were a dinner guest in my 20s, you would have found no salt or pepper shakers on the table.  The reason was simple:  If the food needed more salt or pepper, I would have added it before I served it.  Seasoning the dish was the job of the cook.  The job of the diner was to enjoy it.  As I had mentioned earlier, I’ve become a bit more flexible over the last 20 or so years, and I make allowances for personal preference.  What if 100% of my dinner guests added more salt and pepper to the food though.  This would be a pretty clear indicator that I had been under seasoning my dishes.

Have you ever dined at the Olive Garden?  The flourishing presentation of a gigantic wooden pepper grinder with the offer of “fresh ground pepper?” is an expected part of the dining experience.  The assumption is that your dish WILL need more pepper, and the only real question is when to “say when.”  This is such a common experience that in the 1990s Saturday Night Live broadcast a skit where Dana Carvey taught Adam Sandler the art of being a “pepper boy” in an Italian restaurant!  Again, I ask if the ubiquity of this act tells us that they should consider just putting some more pepper in their food when it is still in the kitchen.  Surely this could save quite a bit of time, energy, and money over the long term.

In the end, there is a reason for “pepper boys”, pepper shakers on tables, and little paper packets of pepper in fast food joints.   Not everyone likes pepper.  Some people like more than others.  Some people will put it on dishes that others would not.  I have very rarely received a bowl of New England clam chowder that didn’t end up getting some pepper added.  I can’t assume that every bowl I ever order will need it though.  The intelligent course of action is to have a small taste to see if it needs anything at all.  If it requires some seasoning, we can then determine how much would be appropriate.

A good friend recently received a letter in the mail from a person who calls himself a financial planner.  The letter was a full-page front and back, as well as a second equally long testimonial article and a postage-paid response postcard.  Every item in the package existed to convince my friend that a reverse mortgage was a good idea for him!  My friend had never met this man, spoke with him on the phone, or corresponded in any way.  Somehow the sender seemed convinced, however, that my friend should strongly consider getting a reverse mortgage on his home!  This man was dumping pepper on a bowl of soup that he had never tasted.

Ruining your lunch isn’t the same as ruining your retirement though.  Someone will always bring you another bowl of soup, but you only get one retirement.  No family has ever been torn apart because mom unwittingly sold some company their ancestral chowder.  Just as the reverse mortgage is far more consequential than the soup, the sins of the reverse-mortgage peddler are for more egregious than those of the short-order cook.

Conclusion

It is a dereliction of the duty of a true financial planner to recommend a solution before truly understanding the nature of the problem.  We must gather all of the necessary information, get to know the clients, and perform painstaking analysis of the data before even proposing a “product.”  It is unfortunate that this type of misbehavior still exists.  It usually involves an unscrupulous salesperson, an uninformed customer, and a large commission check.  Avoiding these three components is a good start to ensuring your protection though.  Avoid anyone who is willing to recommend a solution, before they can demonstrate that they know you and your situation.  Question the motivations of anyone trying to sell you a product that pays them a commission.  Lastly, don’t put yourself in the category of the “uninformed buyer”.  Ask questions, seek second opinions from trusted professionals, and keep reading columns like this one.