As basketball season is getting underway, many in the New England area are getting ramped up for UCONN. Although UCONN is a dominant sports franchise today, when I went there they couldn’t give away tickets to games, they were everywhere – on tables for the taking – for free. Now corporations have to pay a premium just for the privilege of buying seats at the game. That premium has risen exponentially in the last 10 years. It’s risen because of scores – UCONN’s dominant position in the basketball arena. I want you to think about going to watch the lady Huskies play Tennessee – the big rivalry…..but this game will be a bit different, there won’t be any score. Are you still interested in going? I’m guessing you’re not, I’m certainly not interested in going. Keeping score is what makes us work harder, dig deeper, get better. With respect to your finances, are you keeping score? I see countless people who think they know what they have, where it is and how it’s doing but they’re not keeping score. I’ll submit that without keeping score you have no way of knowing how you’re really doing. Without keeping score you have nothing to compare to, no gauge against competition, and no way to accurately track your progress. I’m a big advocate of keeping score. We have tools to help you keep score and make sure you reach your objectives. I’ve seen countless new clients lately who are all great savers, have a nice nest egg saved up, but are failing to keep score. They don’t know what their real rates of return are, how close they’ll be to accomplishing their objectives or how they are performing against what else is available – all because they’re not keeping score. There is a universal law I’d like to share with you – anything you pay attention to improves, period. If you’re trying to lose weight would you avoid the scale for 3 years? Of course not, but why do people avoid keeping score financially? Perhaps it’s due to the inability to do it, perhaps it’s too laborious, but either way it needs to be done. The good news is we keep score for you. We’ll not only track your progress against original goals, plans and objectives but we’ll keep score every day to see how we’re doing with current plans vs. what else is out there. If a change is in order, we’ll effect that change proactively. Why wait until something is a problem? Deal with it head on and help improve your outcomes rather than having to play defense when a problem arises.

How successful do you think the greats in our world would have been without scorecards? I’m guessing not very successful. We wouldn’t have any sports, any heroes, any statistics. Could you imagine a world without statistics? You’re car shopping and the description of the car is simply “four-door car”. No mention of horsepower, braking distance, fuel economy, safety ratings, etc. No difference in all the cars out there? I think there is a tremendous difference in almost everything out there – mostly separated by score, rank statistic, call it what you like – it’s a score. Education is the foundation of our society and it is all about scores – in fact some prestigious institutions can charge massive premiums for entry, be very selective and offer superior placement rates because of their scores. Today life is all about scores whether you like it or not and it’s not going away. Remember the old adage, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. The lesson here is that if you’re keeping score you will do better than if you aren’t keeping score. How are you doing?