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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowDecision making is tough given today’s hectic lifestyles and 24/7 information overload. As my friend, certified financial planner Carl Richards, says in his excellent book, “The Behavior Gap—Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money,” we all have things we want to do, need to do, and ought to do.
Deep down, we know we need to make important life decisions, like updating investment portfolios, creating estate plans, or crafting a college savings strategy. All of these are hard work, take time and are nobody’s idea of fun.
Still, maybe your New Year’s resolution for 2012 was to tackle one or more of these tasks or something equally important to your family’s financial future. If you’re like most, you’re sitting here nine months later with nothing to show but good intentions. It’s not that we’re lazy or don’t care. It’s just there always seems to be a host of other day-to-day demands that feel more urgent and have to be addressed—right now!
How do we break this cycle of important tasks being pushed to the wayside? Richards suggests it is helpful to distinguish between tasks that are urgent (pressing, immediate) and tasks that are important (fundamental to our goals).
Some tasks are both urgent and important. Those belong at the top of your list. Others seem urgent, but are not so important. Still others are important, but not so urgent.
The urgent-but-not-important tasks typically get done. Maybe you know someone who religiously devotes time each day to reading Facebook updates, but has no savings or retirement plan.
The upshot is, tasks that are important but not urgent fall to the bottom of the list and usually stay there. As Richards says, “On a day-to-day basis it’s easier to focus on the urgent stuff, leaving the non-urgent but important stuff to wait.”
This can lead to big problems. The important tasks eventually become urgent, but by then it might be too late. I can attest that 18 years goes by in a blink of an eye. You don’t want to wait until your son or daughter is in high school to start thinking about how to pay for college.
Richards suggests scheduling time each month to tackle important but seemingly non-urgent tasks. Don’t give in to temptation to put them off until next month.
He closes by saying large-scale financial crises can be hard to predict, let alone prevent. However, a personal financial crisis is almost inevitable unless you address the truly important tasks in your life before they become urgent.•
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Kim is the chief operating officer and chief compliance officer for Kirr Marbach & Co. LLC, an investment adviser based in Columbus, Ind. He can be reached at (812) 376-9444 or mickey@kirrmar.com.
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