Once I got to the office, the job was incredibly simple. You listen to people. You assess their situation. You make the necessary suggestions that will improve the situation.
Once the clients get your suggestions they take them to heart and move forward with their lives. A whole new outlook has opened up for them. Their worlds are perfect and everything is as right as rain.
The problem is most people know what they have to do BUT they wait until the last absolute second to do it, if they do it at all. This can be smart and it can be strategic if you have a plan for the multiple variables that life will throw at you. Most people don’t. If they had a contingency plan, they didn’t think it would lead here.
Some people wait on the hopes that something magical will happen. They wait for the lottery or a windfall that fixes everything. 401ks and credit cards were usually fair game because the windfall would fix it all.
Even some of the smartest people would come in and continue to make costly mistakes. There was the family presented with a solid direction out of the craziness. After two months of weekly meetings a map of success was laid out then there was absolute silence.
After a bit of follow up it was found that rather than cover all the necessary responsibilities mentioned in the plan the family decided to buy a new car and go on a vacation to Disneyland.
When I asked why I was informed that a grandparent had been diagnosed with a terminal condition and only had a few months to live unless they opted for an experimental procedure. The surgery was considered risky at best. There was a 1 in 50 chance of survival. I felt bad and wished them the best. Two months later the inevitable happened. The clients were back in the office trying desperately to set up a new plan.
It turns out the grandparent had opted for the surgery and survived. It also came to light that the grandparent wasn’t even on the trip to Disneyland. The parents went on the trip knowing that when the grandparent died the money from the inheritance and liquidated properties would get them out of debt, cover of their most recent expenses, and give them that great windfall.
I wanted to believe this was an isolated incident but this was the norm.
I’m not talking about the single mom who makes 22k a year. I’m talking about dual six figure income earners. Some were earning mid six figure salaries and couldn’t rub two nickels together if their lives depended on it.
There was a lot of sex (mostly extramarital), love (wanting to be loved mainly), bad choices (unnecessarily expensive cars, houses, vacations, colleges, credit cards, toys, etc.) & more sex (second, third, fourth marriages, secret children) distracting people from making better choices.
The marketing machine was also in full effect telling people they weren’t enough and convincing them that they always needed more.
I said all this knowing I needed to fix my phone or buy another one. I had seen this coming for a while but I hadn’t saved for it. I was kind of hoping for something magical to happen. Strangely before the job transition, the drive, and the want to be elsewhere I had a contingency plan, I just didn’t think it would lead here.
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