Chapter 4: A Word I Learned to Distrust: Guaranteed

Monday Night, Week 7

Marcus told me today, in the lab, while we were waiting for our slides to dry. He said it quickly and without looking at me, the way you say something you have already decided you will not apologise for. He joined Coach Dex's VIP group ten days ago. It cost him about a week of his pay from the café in town. "I know what you think," he said. "But I wanted to try properly, not just watch."

I did not say anything clever. I said, "All right. How is it?" He looked relieved that I had not lectured him, and he showed me his phone. Every morning a message arrives in the VIP group from Coach Dex: buy this now, sell that at this time. Marcus said that he has not followed many of the signals yet, because they arrive while he is in lectures, and because he does not really understand what he would be buying. "But the others say they're making a lot," he said.

Then he showed me the real news. On Sunday, Coach Dex told the VIP members that he has a "partner platform" for people who are too busy to follow the signals themselves. A platform, as I understand it, is a website or app that says it buys and sells investments for you: you put your money in, and the platform does the rest. This one promises what it calls "guaranteed monthly growth": every month, it says, your money grows by a fixed amount, with no risk. Marcus read the words out loud: "Guaranteed, no risk, your capital is protected." Capital, he explained to me, just means the money you put in at the beginning.

The platform's page was very smooth. It had a dark blue background, a clean logo, photos of smiling people in an office, and a picture of a certificate with a round seal on it, under the word "Licensed". The name of the platform was long and serious. It was also, I realised slowly, almost exactly the name of a firm that I think I have seen on adverts at the station back home, only with one word added.

I looked at the word "guaranteed" for a long time. I do not know much about investing, but I know that in biology nothing is guaranteed. Seeds do not all grow. Cells do not all divide when they should. Even the most careful experiment can fail. A word that promises that nothing can go wrong made me feel the way I feel when a result looks too clean: that I should check the method before I believe the answer.

Wednesday Night, Week 7

By luck, the economics department runs an introductory lecture every Wednesday that is open to students from any subject, and Lina had already said that she wanted to come with me "to watch a biologist learn about money". Tonight's lecture was about risk and return. The lecturer was a tall, grey-haired woman with a very loud marker pen, and she began by writing two words on the board, one on each side, with a long line between them.

She explained it like this, and I am writing it down in my own words so that I remember. Return is what your money earns, the extra you might get back. Risk is the chance that you get back less than you expected, or even lose some of what you put in. Ways of keeping money that are fairly safe, she said, usually give a small return. Ways of investing that might give a bigger return usually come with a bigger chance of losing. "The two travel together," she said, tapping the line between them. "If you want the chance of more, you accept the chance of less."

Then she said the sentence that I underlined twice in my lecture notes. "If anyone ever offers you a high return with no risk, guaranteed, you have not found a secret. You have found a claim that needs checking." The room laughed, but she did not. She said that honest investments can go down as well as up, and that the people allowed to sell them are, in many places, required to say so clearly.

Lina whispered, "So 'guaranteed' is the opposite of the lecture." I whispered back that it was the opposite of biology too. The lecturer drew one more picture on the board: a seesaw, with "safe" on one end and "more" on the other. Nobody, she said, can sit on both ends at once.

After the lecture, I went to the front and asked her what she would do if someone offered her a guaranteed monthly return. She said, "I would want to know who is making the promise, and whether they are allowed to make it. I would look them up on the official register myself, through the official office's own website, never through a link they sent me. And I would look at the office's warning list too." Then she smiled and said, "But mostly I would be very surprised."

On the walk back to the residence, Lina said that she liked the seesaw. "It's the first money thing that ever made sense to me," she said. "Everything has a cost, even safety. Especially safety, maybe." I said that the platform's page had a seesaw with both ends up in the air at once. She laughed so loudly that someone on a bicycle turned around.

Friday Night, Week 7

Mum called this evening, on her own for once, because Dad was working late at the printing shop. I told her a little about Marcus, without his name in it, and after a quiet moment she told me something about her work that I did not know. At the hospital pharmacy, she said, they never trust a label just because it looks right. Every box that arrives is checked against the order, by someone who did not write the order. "A label is somebody's claim," Mum said. "The check is somebody else's job." I think Grandma would have liked that.

After the call, Lina and I did the lecturer's check together, at my desk. I found the official office that supervises banks and investment firms myself, the same way as last time: by the name on the leaflet from the student money advice office, typed by me, and not through any link from the platform or from Coach Dex. Then I searched the office's register for the platform's name. There was nothing with that exact name.

There was, however, a firm with the shorter name, the one I thought I had seen on adverts at home. It was on the register, allowed to offer investments. But on the register, its website address and its contact details were completely different from the platform's. The official office's page said, in plain words, that people should contact a firm only through the details listed on the register, because sometimes others copy the name of a real firm. A copied name, I realised, is like a photo of our residence on a stranger's account in the group chat. It borrows trust from something real.

Next, we looked at the warning list. Some official offices publish a list of firms that are not allowed to offer investments, or that people have reported as suspicious. The platform's exact name was not on it, and for one second I felt relieved. Then Lina pointed at a sentence at the top of the page. It said that a firm not being on the list does not mean it is safe, because new names appear all the time. "So the warning list can tell you 'no'," Lina said, "but it can't tell you 'yes'. Only the register can tell you 'yes'."

And the certificate with the round seal? Lina zoomed into it and shrugged. "It's a picture of a certificate," she said. "We already know about pictures." The real proof was not on the platform's page. It was on the register, which said nothing about this platform at all.

I sent all of this to Marcus in a long message, as kindly as I could. He answered an hour later. The platform's support team had told him that the names were similar because the two firms are "partners", and that the platform is "registered in another country", which is why it is not on our register. He said that he would put in just a small first amount, "to test it", and see what happened. I typed three different answers and deleted all of them before I wrote, "Please keep every message and receipt. Just in case." He sent back a thumbs-up.

Sunday Night, Week 7

I told Grandma Rose about the word "guaranteed" and about the lecturer's seesaw. She liked the seesaw very much. She said that in her bookkeeping years, the only things she ever saw guaranteed were the bills. Then she asked whether Marcus had put his money in. I said that I thought he had, a little, and that I did not know what to do.

Grandma said, "You've already done the most important thing. You checked, and you told him what you found, and you didn't make him feel small. Now he knows where the register is. That stays with him, even if he doesn't use it yet." Then she said, "There was once a goose who promised ten eggs," and I reached for my pen.

Grandma's Fable: The Goose and the Ten Eggs

On the bank of a slow river there lived a family of ducks. Every spring, each duck laid her eggs in the reeds and sat on them through the cold nights. Not every egg hatched. Some were lost to the cold, some to the rats, and once, in a wet year, many were lost to a flood. The ducks knew this, and they sat on their eggs anyway, because that is how ducklings come.

One spring a large white goose came swimming up the river. On her wing was a round, shiny mark. "This is the seal of the heron who keeps the list of honest nest-keepers," said the goose. "Give me one egg now, and in the autumn I will give you ten ducklings. It is guaranteed. In my nest, no egg is ever lost."

A young duck, who had lost two eggs to the cold the year before, felt her heart lift. Ten ducklings from one egg, and nothing ever lost. She went to her grandmother, an old duck with a crooked beak, and told her about the offer.

The old duck said, "Every egg I ever sat on could have been lost. Anyone who says that no egg is ever lost has never sat on eggs, or is not telling you the truth. And when someone promises you ten for one, you must ask twice as many questions." The young duck asked her which questions. "Go and ask the heron yourself," said the old duck. "Not a friend of the goose. The heron."

So the young duck swam to the bend in the river where the heron had always stood, on one leg, for as long as anyone could remember. Beside him lay a flat stone, and on it he had scratched the names of the honest nest-keepers. There was a goose on the stone: the grey goose of the willow bank. "But that goose has lived at the willow bank for many years," said the heron, "and she has never left it. Is she the goose who spoke to you?"

The young duck swam back slowly and looked at the white goose. She was not grey, and she had not come from the willow bank. Then it began to rain, and the shiny round mark on her wing ran down her feathers in a thin brown stream. It had been painted with mud.

The young duck kept her egg and sat on it through the cold nights. In the autumn there was one duckling. It was not ten, but it was real, and it followed her everywhere.

Monday Night, Week 8

The goose did three things that I recognise. She promised a huge return, ten ducklings for one egg. She promised no risk, "no egg is ever lost", which the old duck knew was impossible, just as the lecturer knew. And she carried a seal that borrowed the trust of the heron, the way the platform carries a certificate and a name that borrows the trust of a real firm.

What the young duck did is what Lina and I did on Friday. She did not ask the goose whether the seal was real. She did not ask the goose's friends. She swam to the place where the heron had always stood, which she knew about without the goose, and she looked at the list herself. Even then, she found a name that looked right. She had to ask one more question: is this goose really that goose? That is what the different contact details on the register told us.

Marcus told me today that he put in his small first amount on Saturday, and that the platform's screen already shows it a little bigger. He was pleased, and I tried to be pleased for him, but I could not quite manage it. I keep thinking about the mud on the goose's wing and how it only ran when the rain came. I asked him again to keep his receipts, and he promised.

I keep wondering what the people behind the platform want from someone like Marcus. I think they want his trust to rest on the name and the seal, so that he never swims to the heron. What they fear, I think, is rain.

What I Checked This Week

The claim was that a "partner platform" could make money grow by a fixed amount every month, "guaranteed", with "no risk". The proof on the platform's page was a serious name, a smooth design and a picture of a licence. When I counted with my own paws, none of it held.

The first thing I checked was the idea itself, and for that I used a source I chose: an introductory economics lecture. Risk and return travel together. A chance of more comes with a chance of less, and honest investments can go down as well as up. A promise of high, fixed growth with no risk is not a secret. It is a claim that needs checking, and the word "guaranteed" is itself a warning sign.

The second check was the official register. I found the official office that supervises banks and investment firms myself, through its name on the student money advice office's leaflet, and searched its register through the office's own website. The platform's exact name was not there. A firm with a very similar name was, but with completely different contact details. A copied name or a picture of a licence is not proof. What counts is whether the firm on the register is the same firm that is talking to you, and the only safe way to contact a firm is through the details on the register. If a firm says it is "registered in another country", that is a question for the official office where I live, not for the firm.

The third check was the warning list that some official offices publish. It can show that a firm is known to be a problem, but a name that is missing from it is not a sign of safety. The warning list can say "no". Only the register can say "yes".

And a fourth thing, from Mum: the label is somebody's claim, and the check is somebody else's job. If the only person telling me that a firm is allowed to do something is the firm itself, nobody has checked anything yet.

Things to Talk About as a Family

Tess's notebook stays closed now until next week. Marcus has now spent money on the VIP group and put a first amount into the platform. He is not careless; he was given a promise that sounds safe, wrapped in serious words and an official-looking seal. Tess has learned two things that many adults have never been shown: that risk and return travel together, and that there is a public register and a warning list that anyone can check through the official office's own website.

Here are a few questions for your family. What does the word "guaranteed" make you feel when you see it in an advertisement for money, and why do you think people who make false offers like that word so much? If a firm told you it was licensed, how would you check that for yourselves, and why does it matter that you find the official office's website on your own, rather than through the firm? And how could you tell a friend what you found, as Tess did, without making them feel small?

Something small to try together: draw the lecturer's seesaw on a piece of paper, with "safe" at one end and "more" at the other. Then, over a week, each person can find one advertisement or offer about money and decide together where it claims to sit on the seesaw. If an offer claims to sit at both ends at once, write it on the back of the paper, and talk about what you would need to check before believing it.