I want to help you get organized. Once you’ve gotten your ducks in a row, I’m confident you’ll feel a lot more in control of your financial life.
There are a lot of reasons almost everyone feels at least a little disorganized. I’ve been working for a long time helping people to get organized.
Over my 20 + years working as a financial advisor, I’ve heard the work I do described a lot of different ways; here are two of my favorites.
“We all have a junk drawer at home. It’s where stuff ends up that doesn’t belong anywhere else, but we don’t want to get rid of. Many times, we also accumulate a “financial junk drawer.” This happens when we buy a financial product or open an account, and then forget about it. Years later, we look at the thing and wonder why we ever set it up in the first place.”
“I like to think about our financial worlds like a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces of the puzzle are the different parts of our financial lives. They are insurance policies, 401(k)s, wills and cryptocurrency, etc. While the pieces are important, the most important thing is determining what the puzzle is supposed to look like. Once we know that, we can go out and find the right pieces to fit in the right places.”
However you like to think about your financial world, one thing is probably true; we could all be a little more organized.
Where do you keep your financial information and important papers? Most people I talk with have them in a filing cabinet, drawer, fire safe or safe deposit box. Some have begun transitioning them to Excel docs or using Google Drive.
In today’s world, we’ve all got a lot going on. We have insurance polices, retirement plan accounts, crypto wallets, real estate papers, business documents, estate planning documents, old 401(k)s, college savings plans, tax returns, and lots and lots of passwords.
Oh, and then add in vaccine cards and whatever else we didn’t know existed until recently.
Bottom line is this; it’s a lot.
Hoping to get better organized and gaining greater control over my financial life, I interviewed Nat Robinson, Founder and CEO of Trustworthy, on the LifeBlood podcast. Nat’s company has developed a Family Operating System to help with the problems I just laid out. Here’s an overview of our conversation and how you can benefit from it.
Getting organized should be easy
We’ve got amazing technology at our fingertips and the ability to put regular people into space; why isn’t there a simple and elegant way to access all of our information? Simplicity is a key feature of Nat’s platform bringing these elements together on one dashboard:
Better still, they can all be connected, securely shared and accessed from any device.
Your information needs to be secure
It’s essential to keep ourselves and our information safe online. Trustworthy is a highly encrypted system and they don’t give or sell your data.
While I’ve been guilty in the past of thinking “all my information is already out there,” we need to be good stewards of how and where we’re putting things on the internet.
You need to be able to invite family and partners to collaborate
Having a will in a safe deposit box or secret location and never telling anyone is not a winning plan. Finances can be a difficult conversation for families and many never bring it up. Ensuring everyone is on the same page and has access to important information is important.
The same is true of advisors or other professionals.
Trustworthy allows you to allow certain people to view certain sections of your account. For example, you may want a financial advisor to have access investment account information and an accountant to view tax information.
Staying up to date should be automated
It’s easy to forget to update or renew things. And there are an ever-increasing number of things to update and renew.
When you welcome a new child or grandchild to the family, beneficiaries may need to be updated. Passports have expiration dates. Insurance needs to be renewed.
Trustworthy is a smart platform that can be set up to provide reminders and nudges when things are due and need to be updated.
It should be easily accessible
I’ve never tried, but I imagine it would be cumbersome to travel with my fire safe.
How are you currently accessing your info when you need it? Trustworthy allows simple access across all devices. It makes it easy to securely cut, paste, download and share whatever you need.
Help should be there when you need it
While simple and intuitive to use, they also have great support in the form of their concierge team.
They’ll help get you set up, make updates and automate everything so you can get organized.
Final thoughts
If it sounds like I’m all-in on this company, it’s because I am. I’ve been aware of the problem of financial disorganization for a long time and I’m excited to have found a company addressing it in an elegant way.
I think this is a great way to get organized and gain control of your financial life.
You can check it out for yourself with a 14 day free trial here, and I encourage you to do so.
You can also listen to the LifeBlood podcast episode I did with Nat here.
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