sdc-behavioural-solutions-debt

SDC-Sharpened Behavioural Solutions — Debt and Investment Debt

Background

Core/Processes/Behavioural-Solutions.md (relocated from MBR/Strategy/ on 2026-08-27) is the general evidence base: knowledge and execution friction move behaviour ≈0; a decision prompt naming exactly one alternative moved it 2.6% → 26.9%. That general finding backs a vault-wide rule about how Talbot’s own tooling is built.

It does not transfer wholesale to clients. Talbot’s constraint, stated 2026-08-27:

Several factors cause these general behavioural solutions to require refinement and sharpening for application to leveraging strategies, where attitudes are skewed and risks are magnified.

• Any strongly forcing or coercion can only be done for negative- or zero-risk debt strategies. Doing more than objectively advising in client-first ways for strategies that magnify risk both potentially harms others, while increasing my business risk.
• Yes, ACTing is critical to benefit, but I need to be VERY careful how and where this is handled.

So the output is not a copy of the Core note with the word “debt” inserted. It is a risk-tiered framework in which the permissible intervention strength is a function of the strategy’s risk profile.

Tasks

• Define the risk tiers explicitly and the intervention ceiling for each. Starting shape, to be tested and refined, not assumed:
  • Zero/negative-risk (Better Rates on existing debt — the borrower is strictly better off): forcing mechanisms permissible; this is where the 26.9% finding applies.
  • Risk-neutral / structural (debt swap, ordering of repayment): decision prompts permissible, framed neutrally.
  • Risk-magnifying (borrowing to invest in any form): objective, client-first advising only. No forced choice, no coercive framing, no default-setting. Behavioural work here is about quality of decision, not rate of action.
• Research behavioural evidence specific to debt — repayment, refinancing, consolidation, rate-shopping — as distinct from savings/investing behaviour, where most of the literature sits.
• Research behavioural evidence specific to investment debt / leverage — how attitudes to leverage are skewed (loss aversion asymmetry under leverage, house-money and break-even effects, overconfidence at exactly the wrong point in a cycle), and what that implies for education design.
• Regulatory and liability boundary — where behavioural nudging by a non-registrant crosses from education into advice, in Canada and the US. This is the business-risk half of Talbot’s constraint and needs a real answer, not a caveat.
• Write SDC/Strategy/Behavioural-Solutions.md — the SDC-sharpened SSOT. Both versions live on: the Core one governs Talbot’s own tooling, the SDC one governs client-facing design. Cross-link them explicitly so neither is mistaken for the other.
• Reconcile with the open MBR thread. MBR/_WorkingOn/Tasks/behavioural-solution-research.md has 8 unresolved Next Steps outstanding since 2026-08-14 — 4 needing Talbot’s decision, 4 actionable. Decide per item: carries to SDC, dies with MBR, or stays parked. Do not open a parallel thread on the same subject.

Success Criteria

• A risk-tiered framework stating, for each tier, what intervention is permissible and why — with the boundary defensible on both ethics and regulation, not just asserted.
• Debt-specific and leverage-specific evidence, cited, distinguished from the general savings/investing literature.
• SDC/Strategy/Behavioural-Solutions.md exists and does not contradict the Core version; the relationship between them is stated in both.
• The 8 open MBR items are each resolved to carry / drop / park.

Notes

• SSOT — Single Source of Truth.
• Non-registrant — not registered with a securities regulator; constrains what may be said to a client without it becoming regulated advice.
• Prior evidence: Core/Processes/Research/Behavioral-Knowing-Doing-Gap.md, Core/Processes/Research/Behavioral-Barriers-Playbook.md.