Oh S***!

Have you ever had that heart-in-your-throat moment when talking to someone and you realize you completely missed the memo on something very important you’re supposed to do as a responsible adult?

“What you do you mean…

…you don’t have a will?
…you’re not paying off your credit cards each month?
…you don’t have an umbrella insurance policy?”
…you haven’t opened a 529 account for your kids’ college savings?”
…you haven’t had a physical in 5 years?”
…you don’t have life insurance?”

We learn things very quickly through these interactions with other people, but it bothers me that some of the most important financial and life actions we need to take as adults are only identified through random conversations. Someone mentions something, we have an “Oh S***!” moment, and then we fix whatever glaring hole we had been blissfully living with.

This is an incredibly inefficient way to go about things, and, more importantly, if you don’t have that helpful little conversation BEFORE you needed to know whatever you needed to know, you’re screwed.

I’ve found myself on the giving end of many of these conversations recently, and I realize that my nature (“detail-oriented / deliberate / conscientious” would be one of the more polite ways to describe it) has made me chase down and fix as many of my “Oh S***!” issues as possible throughout my life. My goal with this site is to share that knowledge, and also hopefully promote a forum to build an even wider body of knowledge for us all.

So why is the site called “Asset-Based Life”?

Because this site is going to go far beyond just a bunch of checklists of things you should be doing. It’s going to challenge you to think about your finances and your life in a new way – a framework that forces you to consider everything you have – your assets – and then set about maximizing and protecting them.

As we go along you’ll get answers to some of the most important issues in personal finance, you’ll hopefully cover a few “Oh S***!” issues you didn’t know about, and you’ll be making better informed, smarter, and more consistent decisions across all of your assets.

If you’re ready, we’ll start with examining what an “asset-based” approach to life really means, and we’ll take a look at some of your most important assets.

But perhaps you’re a little thin on assets, and in more of a paycheck to paycheck situation (“income-based”, in my parlance)? Stick around. This site is precisely for you.