A Sherlock Holmes Approach To Your Income Statement

I think "budgets" are the reason many more people don't have a sensible strategy for reaching their financial goals. The word "budget" creates obstacles in two ways.

First, budgets imply choices, tradeoffs, and the unpleasant word "no."

Second, most people lack even half the clarity about their spending that's required to make a reasonably accurate budget. Without good data, the budget-building process bogs down and even when it moves ahead in fits and starts, results aren't very useful.

In a perfect world, clients and their advisors would be able to immediately, effortlessly conjure up crisp, accurate, detailed data on inflows and outflows of cash, broken down into relevant categories.