Measure twice, cut once (a Tolkien story)

College. A little Baptist school. A buddy and I stayed up all night finishing a paper on Tolkien.

A heroic all-nighter, as we told it.

We marched that paper in at sunrise, proud as roosters...two weeks early.

We'd misread the syllabus. The professor was kind about it. Kinder than we deserved.

But I never forgot the lesson, and it had nothing to do with Middle-earth: all that effort, and I hadn't spent five minutes confirming what was actually due.

Measure twice, cut once.

Anyhow… I bring this up because most financial mistakes I see aren't intelligence problems. They're measuring problems.

Smart people sprinting hard against the wrong deadline... a vesting date nobody confirmed, a payout year nobody mapped, beneficiaries nobody has checked since the first marriage…

The fix isn’t sexy. You look. You confirm the actual dates in the actual documents. Then you decide.

That's the whole philosophy around here, honestly. Nothing fancy. Carpenter rules, applied to money.

Have a good weekend. Go re-read something you love... I'll probably be in Middle-earth.

All the very best,

John Montgomery

P.S. If someone you work with would like a short note like this a few mornings a week, forward this along. The sign-up lives at montgo.co.