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Blog: Minimizing Financial Clutter
 To and From Mom, With Love
I'm taking a break from my "52 Weeks to Financial Organization" blog this week, in honor of Mother's Day. My mother, Edna Hamilton, passed away nearly 4 years ago at age 85, and I'm missing her a lot today.
Mom spent her career as a civil servant in the U.S. government – back in the day when the term "government worker" was not an oxymoron. If she were still working today, she would surely be in some type of managerial position, but back in the mid-20th century she used her many talents as a top-notch administrative assistant for more than 30 years. And by her example, she taught me how to be organized.
When I turned 18, Mom helped me open my first checking account, and also taught me how to balance it to-the-penny. Could our society's financial ills be partly a result of the lost art of checkbook balancing?
Mom loved to send me mail, both of the "snail" and electronic varieties. She sent me self-improvement articles (presumably so I could do things the way she thought I should be doing them), child-rearing articles, and all of the "Cathy" cartoons that related to organizing. Once every year or so, she would send me a long, handwritten list. It was an up-to-date list of all of her investments: account numbers, bank names, how the accounts were titled, CD maturity dates, and the value of each investment. I kept the most recent list in my safe – and I silently thanked her for it after she died. Her organization was surely a gift to me in the weeks following her death.
Speaking of death, she organized that, too. When my father died, Mom set up a filing system in the tote bag the funeral director gave her. All of the information about their gravesite was right there, ready for me to use when the time came. I was in awe of her methodical records of everything she had to do after my father's death: phone calls to insurance companies, Social Security, the Veterans Administration, etc. Her files rivaled most of the organizing books I've read. She figured out what to do, she did it all on her own, and she recorded it for me. What a gift.
To all mothers who are reading this, I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day. If you are looking for gift ideas for your children, I highly recommend that you give them the gift my mother gave me – the gift of organized financial and personal records.
To all of you "grown children" whose mothers are celebrating Mother's Day today, here's a great gift idea: Help your mom get organized. Spend some time together organizing her paperwork and making lists. It will be a gift for both of you.
posted on: 5/10/2009 11:30:00 AM by Katherine Trezise
category: Finances
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Minimizing Financial Clutter
by Katherine Trezise
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About Katherine:
Katherine Trezise is president of Absolutely Organized, based in Baltimore, MD. She is president-elect of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization. Katherine holds a masters degree in business administration, is a Certified Professional Organizer® and a Certified Professional Organizer in Chronic Disorganization®. Absolutely Organized specializes in helping people organize their homes, paperwork and financial records to make room in their lives for the things, people and activities that are most important to them.
Katherine's Website:
www.absolutely-organized.com
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