I still remember sitting in my college dorm room, scrolling through player stats on my laptop while the sounds of campus life drifted through my open window. It was spring 2022, and I was trying to understand why our star quarterback—who had played every single snap of the previous season—had just entered the transfer portal. The campus newspaper called it "inexplicable," but as someone studying both finance and sports management, I started noticing patterns that reminded me of something else entirely: how people manage their financial strategies without really understanding the underlying mechanisms at play.
That quarterback situation perfectly mirrors what I've seen in financial planning. The transfer portal has expanded dramatically, with data showing over 3,500 football players entered it just last year—a 42% increase from two years prior. But here's the fascinating part that connects to finance: players will look to move on due to "lack of playing time" even if they've literally played every snap. Sound familiar? How many times have we switched investment strategies not because they weren't working, but because we didn't fully understand why they were working? We're quick to label something as insufficient without digging deeper into what's actually driving the outcomes.
Let me tell you about my friend Sarah, who nearly abandoned her perfectly good investment portfolio last year. She'd been consistently contributing to her retirement accounts for five years, yet she was ready to completely overhaul her strategy because she felt she wasn't "playing enough" in the market—her returns were steady but not flashy. This is exactly like those college athletes who transfer despite starting every game. The system sometimes mislabels motivations, and in Sarah's case, she was confusing patience with poor performance. That's when I introduced her to the concept I call "Triple Mint"—a framework that helped her see her financial strategy in three distinct layers of security, growth, and legacy.
What I discovered through helping Sarah—and what eventually led me to write about how Triple Mint can transform your financial strategy in 5 steps—is that we often make financial decisions based on surface-level readings rather than deep understanding. In college sports, the game doesn't distinguish between a player wanting more playing time versus wanting to move to a better academic program or different coaching style. Similarly, our financial apps and advisors often don't capture why we're truly dissatisfied with our investments. We might say we want higher returns when what we actually need is better sleep at night knowing our kids' college funds are secure.
The transformation happened for Sarah when we sat down with actual numbers—not just percentages but dollar amounts tracking her specific goals. She realized her "boring" investments had actually grown by 67% over those five years, and the stability meant she could take calculated risks elsewhere. This is the first step in the Triple Mint approach: understanding what game you're actually playing. Are you trying to build wealth quickly, preserve what you have, or create lasting impact? The answer changes everything.
I've seen this pattern repeat with at least two dozen clients and friends since developing the Triple Mint framework. The second step involves mapping your financial transfers carefully—knowing when to stay put and when to actually make moves. Just like college athletes sometimes transfer unnecessarily, investors frequently chase hot stocks or trends when their current positions are perfectly solid. The data shows the average investor underperforms the market by nearly 4% annually mainly because of unnecessary trading—that's like transferring teams every season hoping for better playing time while actually missing the championship game.
By the time we reached the third step in Sarah's transformation, her entire perspective had shifted. She stopped checking her portfolio daily and started thinking in terms of seasons rather than quarters. Her financial strategy became more intentional, less reactive. The fourth and fifth steps of the Triple Mint method helped her build what I call "transfer proof" resilience—creating systems that work so well that the temptation to make unnecessary changes virtually disappears. Now, when market volatility hits, she doesn't panic and sell; she understands she's playing every snap of her financial game, even if the short-term stats don't always look impressive.
What college athletics and personal finance share is this human tendency to misdiagnose our situations. That quarterback from my college? He transferred to what seemed like a better program but ended up riding the bench for his final season—his completion percentage dropped from 68% to 54% with the new team. Meanwhile, his replacement at our school led us to a conference championship. The parallel financial lesson is stark: sometimes what looks like greener grass is actually just different grass, not better grass. Discovering how Triple Mint can transform your financial strategy in 5 steps isn't about finding magic bullets—it's about developing the clarity to understand when you're already winning, even if the scoreboard doesn't immediately show it.