The problem with passive investing

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I spent the Easter weekend in beautiful County Kerry with 25 of my wider family for a long overdue reunion. After a lot of chocolate and an equal number of whiskey sours, I got chatting to my older cousin about his work. He started his career as an architectural technician and worked his way up to a partner at a small architectural firm in the UK. He mentioned that they’re doing much less work on the architecture side lately and have been focusing on investing in commercial property and managing the leases. The most interesting part was that they do it through their self-invested pensions. 

They purchase the properties and renovate them using funds from their pension, then they lease them out, and the rents go back into their pensions. I thought it was super interesting and got me thinking about being more involved in our finances and taking control of our futures.

And that's what I want to discuss in today's episode. The salary trap most of us fall into and the lack of control we place around building personal wealth. This episode is as much for me as it is for anyone reading, because I’ve fallen victim to this just like many others have.

So I’ll start here:

If your plan is to get rich off your salary, you don’t have a plan. You have an income stream and a slowly rising cost of living.

We’ve grown up being told that a good job and a decent salary was the blueprint. Study hard. Work hard. Get paid. Stay the course, and maybe - maybe - you’ll retire at 66 with enough to breathe easy. That dream’s dead. And no one’s bothered to tell us.

Because while your salary might make you feel successful, it won’t make you free. Not in a world where rent is half your income, interest rates are climbing, and the pension system is creaking under its own weight. The truth? You don’t build wealth by earning more. You build wealth by owning more.

The salary trap and outsourcing your future

It’s a trap disguised as a milestone. You earn more, so you spend more. Your lifestyle upgrades. Your expectations inflate. Your free time shrinks. And you get stuck. Not because you’re doing anything wrong, but because the system is designed that way.

And if you’re “doing the right thing” by putting a percentage into your pension or an index fund… Cool. That’s a start, and you’re probably doing more than most. But don’t confuse automation with strategy. You didn’t make a decision. You ticked a box.

We’ve been told the smart thing to do is “leave it to the experts.” Hand it all to a managed fund. Set the risk level to “medium”. Check back in 30 years. Sounds safe, right? It’s not. It’s lazy. And more importantly, it’s disempowering. I’ve fallen victim to it myself.

When you automate everything, you learn nothing. You outsource control. You detach from the outcomes. And then you're surprised when the numbers don’t stack up, the fees eat into your returns, or your retirement projections look like a joke. You don’t need to micromanage every investment, but you do need to understand what you’re in, why you’re in it, and what else is out there.

Because if you’re not involved in your own financial decisions, someone else is making them for you. Usually someone who gets paid whether you win or lose.

Take the wheel

Let’s be blunt: Most people know more about the restaurants in their Deliveroo history than the assets in their portfolio. That’s not a character flaw, it’s a consequence of being raised in a financial system built on opacity, jargon, and passive compliance. But that’s changing. And it should. People are waking up to the fact that control matters. Understanding where your money goes is the first step. Understanding what it could be doing - that’s where it gets powerful.

You don’t need to become a full-time investor. You need to stop sleepwalking through the most important financial decisions of your life.

You don’t need to learn to become a day trader. You don’t need to pick the next unicorn or time every cycle. You just need to care enough to stop letting others decide what your financial life looks like. Because wealth isn’t just about returns. It’s about agency. Confidence. The ability to say “yes” or “no” without asking permission. It’s personal. It’s contextual. And when you get closer to the decisions, the outcomes become yours to own - win or lose.

You don’t have to do it all alone - just stop handing it all over

Being more involved doesn’t mean doing everything manually. It doesn’t mean reading financial reports in your spare time or obsessing over charts. It means choosing platforms that treat you like a partner, not a child. It means asking better questions and making sure you fully understand what you’re doing and the potential outcomes. Because the most expensive mistake you’ll ever make is leaving your future in the hands of someone who doesn’t know your goals and doesn’t care.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a decent income, good. That’s your fuel. But if you want real wealth, you need to convert that income into ownership. Ownership of assets. Ownership of opportunity. Ownership of your time. And that only happens when you get closer to the money. When you stop blindly handing it off. When you start investing not just your capital, but your attention.

What we’ve been working on at Shuttle

• Planning how we can better engage and communicate with customers 🗣️

• Improving internal due diligence protocols and tooling 🕵🏼‍♂️

• Sourcing more great opportunities for you 🔎

The Unsophisticated Investor is brought to you by Scott & Rob, the founders of Shuttle. We’re both sick of private markets being a playground exclusive to the ultra-wealthy so we started a company to challenge the status-quo. Shuttle’s singular focus is to unlock private markets for Millennial and Gen Z tech professionals and help them build wealth through the highest performing private market opportunities.

Scott & Rob
Shuttle Co-Founders