Method through CONTACT

Generate several candidate ways to check the claim and pick the cheapest one that is structurally capable of answering it.

You suspect your financial advisor's fee isn't earning its keep, and your first instinct is the heavy option: a full audit, spreadsheets reconstructing five years of returns, maybe a paid second opinion. That's a weekend gone before you've asked whether a cheaper check could settle the same question.

Method through CONTACT is the move of generating several candidate ways to check a claim, then picking the cheapest one that is structurally capable of actually answering it. The cue is reaching for your default investigation method, usually either the most familiar or the most impressive, without considering alternatives. The operation: list three to five ways reality could answer, from light to heavy. Read the advisor's own annual performance report against a comparable benchmark. Ask the advisor directly what they did beyond the basics this year. Reconstruct returns yourself. Then test each for capability: could this method distinguish "worth the fee" from "not worth it" even in principle? Pick the cheapest survivor. What changes is that you often discover a one-hour check that does the work of a 20-hour one. Don't pick cheap over capable, though; a method that can't discriminate the possibilities is wasted at any price.