Approximately twice a decade, whether I need it or not, I go shopping for clothes.
This past week happened to be one of those twice-a-decade occurrences. And I was reminded why I do it so infrequently.
I came away with four new dress shirts, three pairs of dress pants, and a new pair of shoes…all of which I’m happy with. But the process of finding these items is what drives me insane.
First, I must air my grievance with the pant sizes available. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that a 34 waist and 32 length should be a common size. But it’s not. I’m much more likely to find pants in sizes that seem like they were made to fit Danny DeVito.
But even worse than the sizing issues is the lack of organization in the stores that requires me to spend much more time rifling through racks of pants than should be necessary. I’d be fine with the sizes being mixed up and not in a logical ascending numerical order if the pants were at least grouped together by style. Or, you could have pants of varying styles together, as long as they were organized by common waist size.
But instead you get a rack with different styles, waist sizes and lengths all mixed together. So once I find a style I like, I have to keep circling the rack, looking at each tag individually in the hopes that they have my size (and if you’ll recall the Danny DeVito conversation above, they often don’t).
I’m certain that there’s a better way to do this.
But it occurred to me that this disarray is similar to how most people have their finances organized.
I met with someone last week who had four different checking accounts at three different banks, a savings account at two of those banks, and a money market at one of them. She also had four different IRAs (all with different investment companies) a 401K at her current job, a 401K from a previous job that she hadn’t yet rolled over, an account with some various stocks that she’d inherited, and two different vacant lots that she’d purchased at various times but hadn’t actually bothered to do anything with them.
At first I thought maybe there was a method to the madness behind all of these assets, but upon further inquiry, I learned that there wasn’t. She just had a cornucopia of different accounts and investments that had all “seemed like a good idea at the time.”
But the truth is, she’s not that uncommon. If I had a nickel for every financial inventory I’ve perused that’s in complete disarray…I’d have at least enough nickels to buy my next pair of pants.
The more disorganized your financial life is, the more unlikely it is that you can describe to someone what each of your dollars is doing for you. And if you can’t describe it to someone, that means you don’t have a plan (or at least not a very good one).
If your financial life is a discombobulated department store, we can help. Reach out today.