# The Stupid Mistake Costing Smart People £10,000s

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** James Shack
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slyCyKoLTWQ
- **Дата:** 11.05.2026
- **Длительность:** 12:11
- **Просмотры:** 92,711

## Описание

Looking for a second pair of eyes on your retirement plan? I can help: https://go.novawm.com/yt/slyCyKoLTWQ

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers
Capital at risk. Past performance is used as a guide only. It is no guarantee of future returns. Different funds and asset classes carry varying levels of risk depending on the geographical region and industry sector. You should make yourself aware of these specific risks prior to investing. Prevailing tax rates and reliefs are dependent on your individual circumstances and are subject to change. We do not provide tax advice. Any examples used in the video are for illustrative purposes only and you may get less back than the figures shown. This video does not constitute personal advice. We do not take any responsibility for third party websites and content we may link to from this video. 

00:00 Intro
01:58 What Do We Mean by "Stupid"?  
02:23 Seven Factors of Stupidity
06:25 Simon's Mistake 
07:45 The Solution

This video is issued by Shack Media Limited on behalf of Nova Wealth Limited. Shack Media Limited is an Introducer Appointed Representative of Nova Wealth Limited. Nova Wealth Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN: 778951) and is a limited company registered in England & Wales (10739796) at 20 Farringdon Street, London, EC4A 4AB
James Shack™ property of Shack Media Limited


Copyright © James Shackell 2025. All rights reserved.
The author asserts their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this channel and any video published on it.

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slyCyKoLTWQ) Intro

It's often the smartest people that make the most stupid mistakes. Last year, I had a call from a guy called Simon. He was a smart, successful guy, exactly the type of person that you'd think would have their financial life completely in order. But he was in a panic. Trump had just announced all of his tariffs, markets were falling, and he was sitting on a portfolio that he'd built up over 20 years. He had four old workplace pensions, a SIP, two ISAs, each packed with a dozen different positions, things that he'd bought for reasons that he now couldn't quite remember. So, he was second-guessing everything. And now, with retirement on the horizon, he was feeling the pain, the threat of loss, like he'd never had before. All whilst he had a hell of a lot going on at work, and his father had recently been diagnosed with a serious illness. But somehow, he'd had the foresight to message me and say, "I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm about to make a really expensive mistake. " And he probably was. But not for the reasons that he thought. What was happening with Simon has happened in slow motion with almost every smart person I've ever worked with, and probably that includes you. But it usually doesn't show up like this, not as a moment of panic or an obvious mistake. It shows up in the small decisions that you don't even notice that you're making that compound year after year until one day, they've actually cost you a lot. Because there's an investing principle that almost every investor agrees with when they hear it, and almost nobody actually follows. Charlie Munger put it best when he said, "It is remarkable how much long-term advantage has come from being consistently not stupid instead of trying to be very intelligent. " Simple enough, right? It's almost too simple, which is exactly why most people, including Simon, nod along when they hear that and then do nothing about it. But if you really understood what he's getting at and how important it is, you'd probably change a lot of the things that you're doing with your money right now. I mean, I know I did. You'd certainly never end up like Simon, second-guessing yourself, missing the simple, obvious things that are right in front of you. But to get there, to make sense of

### [1:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slyCyKoLTWQ&t=118s) What Do We Mean by "Stupid"?

what's going on with him, we first need to understand what Munger meant by stupid. Adam Robinson is a chess prodigy, hedge fund advisor, and friend of Warren Buffett. He's a super interesting guy who spent years thinking about this idea of not being stupid. And he defines stupidity, real stupidity, as what happens when smart people overlook or dismiss crucial information that is sitting right in front of them. Robinson took years of

### [2:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slyCyKoLTWQ&t=143s) Seven Factors of Stupidity

research into human error from aviation, from medicine, from cognitive psychology, and he boiled it down to seven specific factors that make smart people miss the obvious. Being outside your circle of competence, stress, rushing or urgency, information overload, fixation on an outcome like I really need money right now, being in a group with social cohesion, the herd mentality, and the presence of an authority. Now, you only need one or two of these to be present to be in what Robinson calls the stupid zone. For example, a little while ago, we were going away for a week, and we were rushing to leave the house. Having to remember to pack so much baby stuff that we somehow managed to leave the front door open. Not just unlocked, but wide open, and we only noticed because we had to turn around and come back because we'd forgotten some other essential bit of baby kit. When you are stressed and rushing, that is when you are most vulnerable. But, sometimes, even if you have all of the time in the world, it's easy to make mistakes. Last year, we decided to get one of those electric cargo bikes to ferry my son around in. And my neighbor, he'd actually found this brand in Denmark which sells them relatively cheaply. The problem, however, is that they come almost completely flat packed. So, I ended up spending 10 hours over 2 days in the street in front of our house trying to assemble this thing. I was so frustrated, just wishing that I'd paid the extra to have it assembled for me. But, as I was nearing the end, my neighbor came over and he said, "Well, you've done a lot better than me. I put the whole thing together in our living room before realizing that I couldn't get it out the front door. " Which was just brilliant, exactly what I needed to hear. And you know, this guy is an architect, right? He's just a smart guy outside his area of competence, facing information overload, fixated on outcome, which leads to missing critical information that is right in front of us. These examples are funny because the stakes are low and recoverable. But, sometimes they're not. The worst airplane disaster in history happened when two planes crashed into each other. Not in the air, but when they were on the ground. This was in Tenerife, 1977. Almost 600 people died. And the captain that caused this was not some inexperienced rookie, right? He was one of KLM's most senior pilots, the head of pilot training. He His face was literally on their adverts. But, on that day, every one of Robinson's seven factors was at play. There had been a bomb scare, which had caused them to be diverted to Tenerife, an airport that they weren't familiar with. There was fog on the runway. The airfield was congested. And he was up against a hard deadline because if he didn't get airborne soon, his whole crew would be stuck there overnight. So, they're getting ready to take off, but they're waiting for this Pan Am plane to clear the runway somewhere ahead of them in the fog. And he thinks he hears the radio tower then give him clearance. So, he starts accelerating to take off. And his flight engineer, a junior member of the crew, then challenges him twice saying, "I don't think we have clearance. Is that other plane actually clear? " And the captain just says, uh "Yes. " And he keeps going. And nobody else on the crew challenges him because he's the most senior pilot on the airline. The Pan Am plane was still on the runway, and they hit it at full takeoff speed, killing almost everyone on board. The way that Robinson puts it is that if you are ever under the influence of all seven of these factors, you are so likely to make stupid mistakes that you should not be doing anything, not signing any contracts, making any financial decisions, let alone be flying a plane. It's obvious when you look at it from the outside, but the problem is that when you are in these situations, you're often blind to it. The aviation industry rebuilt its entire culture after the Tenerife accident, but the lesson they took away was not we need to train better pilots, it was we need to change the conditions in which decisions get made. And that is exactly the lesson here. We don't need to change the people, we just need to change the conditions they're in, which brings us back to

### [6:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slyCyKoLTWQ&t=385s) Simon's Mistake

Simon. At any time, he's stressed enough as it is what with work, kids, now having his dad to think about, he's approaching retirement, so he's fixated on that outcome, feeling much more sensitive to a loss. What's happening in the markets is creating a sense of urgency. He's then got four old workplace pensions that he's been meaning to sort out, but hasn't got around to it. Then a SIPP and an ISA full of positions that he can't remember the reasons for. He'd done what so many smart, successful people do. He'd reached for complexity. A bigger mortgage than he probably needed, slightly smaller emergency fund than was sensible, complex investments that were just pushing him even further outside his area of competence. Each of these decisions on their own might have looked smart at the time, but each one just added another thing to manage, another small stress in the background, a risk that he couldn't see. Then, to top it all off, he'd been listening to various pundits online, figures of authority who talk with such reassuring conviction, suggesting dramatic moves like selling out of the US, going to cash, in an echo chamber that suggests that everyone is doing the same thing. So, when we sat down to talk, we didn't chat about the markets, because the markets weren't the problem. I just held a mirror up to him, got him to take a step back and look at

### [7:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slyCyKoLTWQ&t=465s) The Solution

how hard he'd been making things for himself. And this is what Charlie Munger was getting at with his focus on not being stupid. You don't beat the game by being smarter than everyone else. You beat it by building a financial life where stupidity has fewer places to hide, by reducing complexity, reducing the number of decisions you need to make, reducing cognitive load. You see, we all have complicated enough lives as it is. Jobs, kids, the noise of modern life, all these different things calling for our attention that we're constantly compromised by these factors. We're constantly in the stupid zone. And that's even before we start trying to make decisions about money, which for most people is outside their area of competence. It's emotional, it's stressful, it creates a sense of urgency. And remember, for most of us, this doesn't show up as a big panic, but in small, sub-optimal decisions that you don't even notice you're making that compound over time. After so many years doing what I do, working with different people, I've come to realize that the most important thing when it comes to money, as in so many things in life, is about building an environment that helps you get out of your own way. It's not about hitting winners. It's about avoiding unforced errors by building systems and processes that simplify, that make your life easier, not more complicated. Everyone agrees with that, right? But so few people actually do it. For two reasons. The first is because the answers are so damn obvious. You've heard them a million times before. It's kind of like if you want to feel better physically and mentally, everyone knows you need to sleep better, eat better, exercise, and drink enough water. It's obvious. So obvious that everyone just looks past the basics, instead reaching for complex diets and supplements, which distracts them from the simple things that actually matter. So, in Simon's case, we reviewed those old workplace pensions, getting that off their to-do list where it had been causing background anxiety for years. We consolidated his accounts so he's just got less to manage, set up direct debits so he's not second-guessing whether to invest each month, wrote down what he's investing in and why, so he's not constantly revisiting decisions that he's already made, took a little bit less risk with his investments, held back a little bit more cash as an emergency fund, just to give him a bit more breathing space the next time things get stressful. None of that should surprise you. You have heard versions of that a hundred times before. But I think one of the biggest single things that you can do to simplify your financial life and reduce cognitive load is passive investing. 40 years ago, working out what to invest in was genuinely hard, but today, the fact that you can go out there and buy perhaps a single fund matched to your desired level of risk that will spread your money all across the globe and enable you to capture the returns that markets have to offer, it's revolutionary. I'm not saying passive investing or a single fund is right for everyone. Some people might like to have a bit more control of their allocations or be more active, but it's an option to consider because a simpler portfolio means fewer decisions to make, a fewer places for stupidity to hide. It's easier then to put that out of your mind and ignore the noise of the markets, which frees up your mental energy for the parts of your life that actually need it. Now, the second reason people don't do this stuff is simply because they haven't found the time. So many people agree that they need to simplify, need to make their lives easier, and yet they still have four old workplace pensions floating around, investments that they've questioned for years, and cash that they know they should be putting to better use. Not because they disagree, but because they just haven't got around to it. Most of the clients that I work with fall into this bucket. They are smart, capable people who just don't have the bandwidth. And honestly, most of what I do is just holding a mirror up to them, helping them to see the obvious things that are sitting right in front of them, and then just make sure those things actually get done. And on that note, if you have been putting this stuff on the back burner, and you want a hand, please do get in touch. There is a link in the description of video where you can book in a call with my team. But if instead you are now feeling motivated to get stuck in and take action on your own to start making your life simpler and reduce stress, perfect, cuz that was the whole point of this video. And one place you might want to start is by reviewing any old pensions you have. For most people, they are the largest financial asset that you're likely to own, and the most complex, which is why you now need to watch this video here where I explain exactly how to sort them out and get them working harder for you. Look after yourself. I'll see you in the next one.

---
*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/53025*