I once heard of a couple who were teachers in their mid-fifties. Having pooled the proceeds from selling both their flats when they moved in together in the 1990s, they found themselves in the happy position of owning a mortgage-free west London house worth more than £1 million. He was originally from Norfolk, and was eager to move back to a larger and prettier country home costing half the price. They could then bank £500,000 in tax-free profits, retire early and travel the world. She, however, was a lifelong Londoner who refused to leave London.
Not knowing all the facts, I cannot say who was right. But it might help to consider the inverse. Imagine a couple living in a large house in Norfolk who win £500,000 on the lottery. Can you see them tearfully clutching their cheque and declaring: ‘Bliss! Now we can move to a tiny house in Acton and work for the next ten years’?
This mind trick, practised by the late Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, simply involves considering the mirror image of any decision: ‘Always invert’ was his mantra. I apply this to air fryer sceptics, who smugly pronounce it is ‘just a small convection oven’. No, a convection oven is merely a needlessly large and inefficient air fryer. When do you need to cook a swan or an ostrich?
So, I ask the electric car sceptics among you to picture a parallel universe where all cars are electric, when a rogue German engineer invents the internal combustion engine. ‘This so-called engine you’ve developed, Fritz, tell me exactly how it works. You see, we already have electric motors where an electric charge delivers forward momentum.
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