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Spring brings new life, new air, (once we work through the pollen!), and a new awareness of how things change. It’s a perfect time to review the components of your financial life and make changes where needed.
Your financial life can easily become stale and out of date if you don’t take time to discard, organize, and re-orient. Spring is a great time to bring new light to old problems and to start creating solutions.
Financial Spring Cleaning
I like to use the season changes as a time to accomplish simple projects like cleaning out my bathroom drawers. I recently spent a good bit of a Saturday morning doing just that and was amazed at how refreshed the process made me feel afterwards.
I threw out things I don’t use, took an inventory of things I currently do use, and made everything look more organized and less messy.
Financial spring cleaning requires that you devote a little bit of time to the project. Just like cleaning out your drawers, it won’t magically happen without your direct effort.
I’ve lost count of the number of times clients have told us that they intend to discard an old investment or insurance policy but never make it happen. Over time, these loose ends soak up the energy and muddy your focus.
Seth Godin recently wrote in his blog, “We organize our lives to maintain the pressures & boundaries we’re used to.” This is exactly right. If we’re used to financial messes, cleaning things up one time won’t likely have a lasting impact.
Wealth Destruction via Messes
I have a hypothesis about financial messes. I believe many individuals actually like messes and therefore have difficulty mustering the momentum to break free of the hold that these messes have over their lives. It’s an intangible and possibly unconscious mind-set that can end up as a hugely destructive force within your life.
Financial planning and investing are difficult enough without adding the unnecessary element of messiness. Moving from crisis to crisis is hardly a recipe for building a sustainable financial life.
Rewiring your finances changes your future.. Perhaps more than anything else, that’s what investors want…a future that looks different than the present.
To change the trajectory of your future, you have to “unlearn” ingrained behaviors. What is today, and what might be tomorrow depend entirely on how you approach these changes. Start there.
Related: What’s the One Thing That Could Improve Your Financial Future?