This is Optimal Finance Daily episode 1749.

Everyone else could be wrong by Stephen Keys of Trip of a Lifestyle.com.

I'm your host and personal finance enthusiast, Diana Merriam.

Now let's jump right into our next post as we optimize your life.

Everyone else could be wrong by Stephen Keys of Trip of a Lifestyle.com.

When a major decision needs to be made and you're no expert on the issue at hand,

you probably do the same thing most people do. Ask around.

Like if you don't know the first thing about what investments to pick in your 401k,

it's pretty normal to ask a few co-workers what they think and then maybe compare their answers

with a quick Google search. It makes sense. I call it the journalist method.

When a reporter has to write a story about something really complicated,

like some new discovery in particle physics, they need to do some research first,

but they can't possibly learn physics from the ground up just for one article.

Instead, they grab three or four people who know about the topic, ask them to explain it,

and summarize what they hear. This usually works pretty well. There are two big problems with

the journalist method though. The first is that sometimes, by only checking with a few sources,

really important info gets left out. Actually, when you're just asking a few friends or scanning

the first few results of a Google search, it's pretty easy to reach the wrong conclusions.

The second problem is even worse though, because it's part of the way you think.

Even if you ask more people or find more resources, you'll have a psychological tendency

to ignore the outliers, even when they're actually correct. If nine people say the same thing,

while a tenth says something totally different, you'll probably just assume that the tenth dude

...