Think about how difficult it is sometimes to pick what you want from a menu at a restaurant.  How do you make that decision?  Do you base it on what you feel like eating that evening?  Or on what this restaurant specializes in?  Do you consider what you ate yesterday or what you are planning to eat tomorrow?  

Choosing a meal is a small decision.  No matter what you choose, you will be hungry again the next day and want another meal.  Time passes.

Big Decisions

By contrast, what you do with your finances are big decisions that are difficult to make for a number of reasons, including the following:

• You may not know what you want, or what your goals are.  The currently topical field of Behavioral Economics teaches us that individuals are very bad at knowing what their goals are, especially in the context of big financial decisions.
• You may not know what your options are.  This may have to do with a lack of knowledge of the current law, or of potential financial solutions that are out there in the marketplace.
• You may not know what your current resources are or what you are capable of.  It is difficult to comb through one’s own finances and understand where they currently sit, which is the first essential step to determine where they want to go.

Get Help!

Without knowing your situation personally, the best piece of advice I can provide is that you need to get help from a qualified financial planner as you set goals and make decisions to set out on a path toward achieving those goals.  Even in the restaurant situation I describe above, you might enlist help from others around – your dining partners, for instance, or the wait staff.  If you are self-confident and feel like you make good decisions without the help of others:  All the more reason to work with a financial planner, because you might have what is called Confidence Bias in Behavioral Economics.  Most importantly:  Don’t rely on a spouse as your financial planner.  There is too much other baggage in a marriage relationship to make good financial decisions without enlisting the help of third-party experts.  Yes, you need to work with your spouse, but the married couple together in turn needs to work with the third party.  

IMO

There is a new book out by author Steven Johnson titled “Farsighted”, which is about how to make good decisions.  Reading a review of the book gave me the idea to write this blog.  The act of reading a book such as this or Googling “How to Make Decisions” and reading the articles that pop up is itself a way of getting help to make decisions.  Why not, instead, work with a financial planner who is trained to work with people to help them set goals and make and implement plans to achieve those goals?  I know, financial planners are more expensive than books and free articles.  However, as with anything else, you get what you pay for.  You are going to get a more personalized and valuable experience by working one on one with the planner, and you will likely easily recoup the money you spend on the planner.  Please feel free to contact me if you are having difficulty sorting through your financial life and figuring out where you want to go next.