Plansmith Blog

This past year, I sent my oldest off to college for the first time. Amid the tears (ours) and shouts of joy (hers) there was much hard work, paperwork and check writing involved to get her to this point. And while we want her to celebrate what she has already accomplished, we also want her to focus on the details needed to get her to the next milestone - College Graduation. Fortunately, she does have a mandatory Strategy 101 class that – among other things - requires her to map out her course schedule for the next four years. The focus is not to create a roadmap that she should not deviate from, but rather to get her thinking about how to build in nice-to-haves (study abroad), plan for some "what-ifs" (change of interests), and to regularly check back in to see if she is staying on course or needs to alter her path.

I’m compelled to relate planning to everyday activity – after all, just because we are bankers, doesn’t mean we don’t experience life’s little pleasures (or displeasures) any more than, say, your average commuter. Today, while legally stopped in a left turn lane, waiting for traffic to clear before proceeding to Plansmith’s office, a man honked and gesticulated wildly because I didn’t pull into the intersection and ready myself for the turn. Never mind I couldn’t make the turn anyway. Conclusion: he didn’t plan well. If he was in a hurry, he should have planned to leave earlier, thereby beating me to the turn light where he, too, would sit and wait for traffic to clear. Maybe he took a different route from home, or maybe I did, causing this situation (I did stop at the dry cleaners – HA! solved).