Coming Together - A Less Complicated Financial Life
Coming Together - A Less Complicated Financial Life
Mike Zaccardi | Jun 19, 2023
I GOT CAUGHT UP IN some weird investment fads during the recent era of 0% interest rates. With cash investments and bonds yielding almost nothing, I instead sought to pad my investment returns by opening new brokerage accounts to snag promotion cash, and by dabbling in digital currencies and newfangled alternative investments.
Result? I ended up with far too many financial accounts—and it became a burden to keep track of everything. Just a year ago, I had investments in obscure real estate deals, individual pieces of art, bottles of wine, stablecoins and other relics of the speculative pandemic-era mania.
What’s more, after leaving both my fulltime job and my teaching position at the University of North Florida, there were old retirement accounts and a health savings account (HSA) that I was lazy about rolling over.
I craved a less complicated financial life. Simplicity is bliss, as many HumbleDollar writers have noted, and I’m now firmly in that camp. Here are six key benefits I’m enjoying now that almost all of my investments are in one safe place:
1. Getting my weekends back. As my number of accounts grew, keeping tabs on everything became cumbersome. A proud bean counter, I’ve routinely updated my personal finance spreadsheet since I was a freshman at Florida State University in 2007.
But what used to take 10 minutes on a Saturday morning turned into something that felt like a chore. By the middle of 2022, logging into all those unique accounts to tally my net worth took north of 45 minutes. I sought to slim down that process starting at the end of last year.
2. Less wasted mental energy. Helping my future self by streamlining my finances now became mission critical. With all those taxable investment accounts, completing my 1040 tax return became brutal, especially when coupled with the headaches that come with filing taxes for a small business.
I also felt oddly stressed by the disarray in my financial life—and there were far too many emails from all those investment sites.
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