Imagine Your Worst Case
February 17, 2012Over the last few months, I’ve had the opportunity to learn a whole lot more than I ever knew about some “behind the scenes” things that happen before a soldier gets deployed overseas. My girlfriend works as part of a dental team that goes to military bases on weekends and performs dental work on a ridiculously large number of soldiers prior to their deployment. On a normal day in a normal private practice, she may see 8-10 patients.
Last weekend, their team saw 150 on Friday, 160 on Saturday and 120 on Sunday. And they did this all in temporary trailers set up on a base. A whole dental office is set up and torn down in a short period of time. It’s an amazing thing to watch.
We were talking about the reasons behind this service and I thought it was pretty cool that our military provides this service to our soldiers so that they aren’t in pain on the battlefield because of a problem with their teeth. She told me that was just a part of the reason. The “nice” reason that the service is performed is for combat readiness. The hidden reason was something I found a bit more sobering. They are preparing for the worst.
How many times have you watched a movie or a TV show and heard that a body was so badly injured that they were only able to be identified through dental records? Well, the best way to have dental records on soldiers is to have a very thorough dental exam days before deployment. Preparing for the worst is what they are doing. It’s something that I do when I am meeting with someone to talk about their financial life. Let’s prepare for the worst and be pleasantly surprised by better results.
I actually do this in my personal life too. It’s a great way to deal with things when you can’t predict the eventual outcome. If you can imagine the worst outcome in any given situation and then figure out how you would deal with it, then you are truly prepared to move forward with a decision.
I have found this to be a very effective way to deal with people making financial decisions recently. Here are some examples that immediately come to mind. Someone was considering pension options as part of his retirement decisions. Should he take the “single life annuity” because it’s by far the highest monthly income option? Should he take the “100% survivor annuity,” which was much less income per month but would provide his wife with an income should he die before her? We talked about the worst possible case scenario in the single life option. It was him dying after receiving the 1st check, leaving his wife without his pension income and she wouldn’t be able to make ends meet without it. The worst case scenario of the 100% survivor option was that they would have less disposable income for about 5 years until his wife could start collecting Social Security. For him, talking through the worst case scenarios provided a lot of insight and helped him make the decision that was best for him.
Another person I met today was considering doubling her 401(k) contribution from 6% to 12% because she just got rid of her land line and a few cable movie channels she found she wasn’t watching but was paying for. She was concerned that if she doubled her contribution, her budget wouldn’t allow her to have any fun. So I asked the “what’s the worst thing that could happen?” question. Her answer was “I won’t have any money for fun and I’ll come back and reduce my contribution level next month.” We then talked about the best case and it was that she’d have twice as much money in her retirement account! She was willing to take a chance on increasing her contribution and let go of the fear of not having any money for fun. She looked at the worst case, and then the best case and made a decision that could have a significant impact on her life over the next 20-30 years.
Prepare for the worst. It’s a great approach to making important decisions. Hopefully, if you don’t do that now you can add it to your thought process and it can help improve your decision making. I’ve seen a lot of people go from confusion to absolute clarity regarding a major life decision using this technique. I just hope that the worst case reason that soldiers are sitting in Julie’s dental chair never becomes a reality.