Easy to walk into

In a mall in Kuwait City, a sign beside a stand of new phones says the price is small, monthly, and nothing today.

Nothing today is the important part. A young man stops, does the sum for one month, and finds it manageable. The form is short. The person behind the counter is friendly and in no hurry. Twenty minutes later he walks out with the phone in his pocket and a commitment that will outlast it.

That is how most traps feel from the inside. Not like traps at all. They are pleasant to enter, and that is not an accident. The way in is wide and well lit. The way out is narrow: a fee to leave early, a balance that shrinks more slowly than it should, an agreement that renews itself while nobody is looking. Wanting to be out is not the same as being out.

And whoever set it up stands to gain more from it than the person inside. That is what separates a trap from a fair bargain. Because the gain is theirs, they can afford to keep polishing the entrance, softening the language, moving the costs further down the page. They are thinking in years. The man at the counter is thinking about today, and very often he is thinking about today because something else in his life is pressing on him.

The useful habit is to start with other people. It is easier to see the trap someone else is walking into: the subscription a friend forgot, the loan a cousin took for a wedding. Once you can see the shape in their lives, it becomes much harder to miss in your own.