Sushi Money

    Yesterday after work I went inside to shower and change.  Feeling refreshed, I put on my “comfy clothes”… shorts and a favorite t-shirt to relax a little in the evening.  Do you have a favorite shirt of some kind, or other clothes that you enjoy wearing to relax?  Most of us have several particular shirts or something… I wear mine when I want to be more creative with writing, thinking, etc.  Here’s the interesting part:  After putting on that comfy shirt and spending the evening doing homework with our son, paying bills, catching up on email, and doing some writing, I finally went to bed.  As I stood in front of the mirror… to my surprise I realized I was not wearing my favorite t-shirt!  It hit me with a jolt of awareness… it was all an illusion, false perspective and a simple mistake.  I thought I grabbed a particular shirt and went blindly about my business with that knowledge, all the while being wrong. 

     New thoughts came to mind as a parallel to that experience.  It seems that much in our lives is an illusion.  “What if,” I thought, “it’s like that with everything?”  We make choices and decisions based on a set of circumstances, sometimes believing it is the most reliable set of circumstances.  And yet we may be totally wrong about the circumstances or elements with which we are basing our choices and decisions on.  We even extrapolate our emotions and feelings from those circumstances.  

Could our financial lives be the same way?  I think that the answer is clear.   We make choices, decisions and take action based on what we know, or what we think we know.  Many times we don’t know enough, and what we think is absolutely incorrect.  Much of our life is indeed perception and belief.  I surely won’t argue for the exercise in trying to make sure we are correct all the time.  I don’t know anyone who has the time or capacity for outright perfectionism in living a functional, productive life.  We make the effort to learn and grow, set our intentions and goals in action and then do the best we can with the choices and decisions we make, hopefully learning during the journey.  And we try to remain observant and prepared for the opportunities that will help us improve our life.  

My real point however, is that perhaps we should simply recognize that we don’t have all the information about things.  We have some information, and we should not assume, nor take for granted the evidence we have as absolute proof.  We must be willing to learn, to change and to adapt with new information to modify our context and perception. 

     With the knowledge that we are doing the best we can with a limited set of knowledge and information, we then have good reason to re-evaluate our choices and actions over time.  Maybe it’s time to look at that mutual fund we’ve been investing in the past couple of years.  Do we have more knowledge now?  How is the expense ratio or the fund’s investment goals related to our overall asset allocation, or desired portfolio structure?  What rates are we getting on the cash stashed in the bank?  Do we have CD’s or money market funds holding cash that may be put to better use?  Or vice versa, maybe our portfolio is way more aggressive than we need, and it’s time to rebalance?   And what about our home and mortgage loan?  If we’re paying PMI, when can we drop the PMI payments?  And credit cards… if we’ve accumulated more debt than we would like, what is our monthly APR, and how much money are we spending on financing charges?   Etc, etc.

     Regardless of the casual benefits, ignorance is most certainly not bliss.  Much better to be well informed and aware, at least for our financial well-being.  Like a favorite t-shirt that really wasn’t, it’s good to remember that much of what we see and experience in life is based on the context of the moment and our perception.  And we don’t always see what’s really there, sometimes being surprised down the road a bit. In the financial arena, surprises are generally not a good thing!

“How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one’s senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality.”

                                                                                            Norman Douglas