m-o-n-e-y !!!

During a bout of insomnia the other night, I decided to start tackling the pile of clutter I call my office. I pulled out an old file box that's been carted from home to home with me but hasn't been opened for 10 years or so. I never got rid of it because I knew there were important documents in there.

So I looked, and there WERE important documents in there!

I found a statement of investment with a mutual fund that I had entirely forgotten about. This is very wrong and irresponsible behavior.

I received a gift of about $2500 when I was 18, and my boyfriend at the time helped me pick out a mutual fund to park it in. My file contains all of the statements that I dutifully read and organized during the time that I was in college. I did everything right, just as my mother taught me.

My mom is the most organized person you will ever meet. Literally. A few weeks ago, I mentioned going to my grandma's birthday party. Since it was to be a surprise, and my mom and I were the ones to take Grandma there, Mom had to rely on other folks to set it up. She had everything needed for the party packed in boxes labeled with typed inventory lists that she delivered ahead of time. Jars and containers inside the boxes were also labeled, even though the contents were unquestionably clear. She even had different agendas for everyone helping that said things like: 3:00 arrive at site, 3:05 set up chairs, 3:15 put tablecloths on tables, 3:20 unpack box #4, 3:35 break, etc. On top of this, each person received an emailed list of instructions that rivaled Tolstoy's War and Peace in length. All this for a party of about 25 people.

So it is expected that I carry out my life in a put-together, responsible fashion. I did that for a while. But I take after my father more than my mother, and he is the most DISorganized person you will ever meet. Really.

My natural tendency is not for planning and following schedules and the like. My true nature reared its ugly head after I got out of college, and my life fell to pieces. I try to keep those pieces together, but I must admit it's a struggle. Sometimes I lose track of one thing or another and have to go urgently scrambling after it, begging and pleading for things to work out, while I momentarily neglect everything else in my life.

This is not a recommended way to live. I have enough sense to know that, but I have not been able to convince this mind of mine to change for any appreciable length of time.

So I found this thing I had lost. When I called the fund, I found out that their address of record for me is a place I never even lived. It is the apartment I was supposed to move into when I left college. See, Mom? I was organized for a short period of time. Before I moved away, I arranged a change of address. <pat on back>

But since I didn't move into that address, the fund had no way of obtaining a new address from me. And since I didn't receive any more statements to add to my file in the little box I didn't use anymore, I plumb forgot about it.

My heart dropped when I heard that there was no record of my account number. Then my spirits soared when I found out that the problem was simply that account numbers had changed sometime during the last ten years while I was neglecting the details of my life. And now I am on Cloud Nine because it turns out that that original $2500 is now worth over $13000!

Acknowledgements: Thank you, Mom, for trying to instill some sense of responsibility and orderliness in me. I have you to thank for any semblance of order that is found in my life. And thank you, High-School-Sweetheart, for helping me pick a mutual fund that has far outperformed any other funds I've chosen myself to build on the very small sums of toiled-for cash I've managed to set aside in the years since.