Something Can't Come Up

We all have a collection of phrases or pieces of advice we've been given that stick with us our entire lives. Recently, I added one to my collection that I've mentioned before that came from the President of the foundation where I've been a research volunteer for the last nine months or so. He said "you don't want to put yourself in a position where something can't come up." 

The specific context was about time constraints. In my (almost) daily list on NotePD I talked about this a little bit, noting that when I've got tasks related to stuff around our property or some other project like that I prefer to get it done very early for a bunch of reasons including fewer crowds when relevant, cooler weather and that I will feel distracted all day knowing that whatever-project is still waiting for me, not yet done. Another reason is if I have to do something and I plan to push it off until mid-late afternoon and a fire department call for service comes in, then the project gets torpedoed. It's not the end of the world if the task was something like splitting firewood but I'd rather get stuff done so that it is not hanging over my head. 

A more dramatic example involves the recent threat we had with the Crooks Fire. I've mentioned this before but it was the most serious wildfire threat Walker has ever had. We dodged a couple of bullets here, one that this started in mid-April not mid-late June which is the most dangerous part of our fire season and that all of the outside crews and air resources were able to stop it.

I mentioned my having a big project a while back. That big project was that my firm switched brokerage firms, we moved our client assets to Fidelity. I'm thrilled with the move but the process was a lot of work. The decision was made and all necessary paperwork between our firm, Fidelity and Ameritrade (our former brokerage firm) was in place in the last week of January.

 

That next week, I went to Missouri to look at this engine for Walker Fire, came back and immediately started the process. The work flow here was to email all clients with a heads up, then to start calling all of them to set expectations, then do the paperwork (it was all electronic), have our admin review and then submit which then led to the clients' part of going through a Docusign to complete the process. I didn't keep track of how long it took me to do my paperwork part on the front end but for clients it could take as little as 2-3 minutes to complete.

From there it was just a matter of waiting for the assets to start transferring. By the 2nd week of March I was just waiting on one client's inherited IRA (more complicated account opening process for those) and my Roth Solo 401k which also has a more complicated account opening process. I was under the impression that all of this had to be completed by March 31st. Either I read incorrectly or Ameritrade gave us more time, until May 2nd but either way, I did not want the time crunch of trying to complete this by spending 16 hour days during that last week of March. I wanted a margin of error or safety. Tracking down a stray account or three is one thing, kicking the entire can down the road is another, I really dislike deadlines of that sort that I can avoid by just starting early. 

Now imagine if I'd known the real deadline was May 2nd and I thought to myself, oh I can start on April 15th and get it done. I could have done that but then I would have put myself in a position where something can't come up. Of course something did come up, the Crooks Fire.

 

By the time the Crooks Fire started, the move to Fidelity was long since completed. I was long past even thinking about it. I was able to recreate my routine from the Goodwin Fire in 2017 which was almost as bad as the Crooks; get up a 5am (pretty much when I get up everyday), do day job work until just before 9am, get to the station to be a good host to the outside crews staging at our firehouse, then brief our guys what's going on with the fire and what we're going to do and then go do it. Once the firehouse day is over at around 6pm, I could go home to both decompress and tend to any other day job work (mostly just reading) and then repeat the next day until the incident was over. 

I've written many times about the possibility of having your hand forced but some unexpected event or series of events. The easy examples include forced out the job you thought you'd ride all the way to retirement or figure how your portfolio will recover from an unusually large one-off expense that comes after a large decline in the stock market. 

I am very motivated to avoid bad situations that with a little bit of looking ahead, could be avoided. Dodging that stress makes life easier and I imagine for most people it is simply a healthier way to live. This applies to real world life and financial life.