The Cost Blindness ProblemLet me tell you something that might sting a little, but sometimes the truth does that. After thousands of conversations over the years, I can tell you with near certainty that about half the people I sit down with simply do not want to know what they are paying. Not cannot know. Will not know. There is a difference, and it matters.I call it willful cost blindness, and it is one of the most expensive conditions you will never find in a medical textbook. These folks have spent decades building wealth, making sharp decisions, negotiating deals, and running households or businesses with precision. But when it comes to the fees their financial advisor or firm charges, they suddenly develop a remarkable ability to look the other way.Here is the uncomfortable part. When you work with someone for years, you build a relationship. You know their kids' names. You have been to their office Christmas party. They sent flowers when your mother passed. And that is exactly how the game is designed to work. Because once you like someone, once you trust them, it becomes almost impossible to look them in the eye and say, "I appreciate the relationship, but I am not paying these kinds of fees anymore."But there comes a point, and I have seen it happen again and again, when people just snap. Like that fellow in the movie Network who threw open the window and shouted that he was mad as hell and was not going to take it anymore. Something clicks. The loyalty finally costs more than the comfort is worth.Let me give you three examples from real folks I have worked with. Names changed, of course, but the stories are true enough.First, a married couple in their early sixties. Retired teachers, both of them. Good pensions, modest lifestyle, about four hundred thousand saved. They had been with the same broker for eighteen years. Nice guy. Sent birthday cards. The problem was they were paying one and a quarter percent annually on assets under management plus the hidden fees inside the mutual funds he recommended. When we sat down and ran the numbers, they discovered they had paid over seventy thousand dollars in fees over the past decade. For what? A portfolio that underperformed a basic index fund. The wife actually cried. Not from sadness, but from frustration. She kept saying, "We trusted him." They did. And that trust cost them a small car every year.Second, a widow in her mid-seventies. Her husband handled everything before he passed. She inherited a relationship with an advisor she barely knew and a portfolio stuffed with products that paid the advisor handsomely whether the market went up or down. When I asked her what she was paying, she had no idea. None. When we pulled the statements apart, we found she was losing nearly fourteen thousand dollars a year in fees on a seven hundred thousand dollar account. She had been a widow for six years. Do the math. She looked at me and said, "My husband would have fired this man years ago." She was right. He would have.Third, a retired business owner, seventy-one years old, sold his company for just under two million dollars. Sharp as a tack. Built something from nothing. But when it came to his investments, he handed the reins to a big-name firm and assumed the brand meant quality. It did not. He was paying advisory fees, platform fees, trading fees, and expense ratios that together added up to nearly two percent annually. On two million dollars, that is forty thousand dollars a year walking out the door. When I showed him, he got quiet. Then he said something I will never forget. "I would have fired any employee who wasted money like that."The point is simple. Loyalty is a fine quality. But blind loyalty to someone who is bleeding your retirement dry is not loyalty at all. It is denial dressed up in good manners. At some point, you have to look at the numbers, set aside the relationship, and ask yourself a hard question: Am I paying for service, or am I paying for comfort?

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