Would You Like it Dewey Decimal or Alphabetical?

You might have guessed that I love to read.  I admit it; reading is one of my favorite hobbies.  I love reading the Sunday paper.  I love flying on a Sunday so I can get the Sunday New York Times and read it cover to cover.  On a more mundane level, I like the Sunday Washington Post. I especially love the Business Section, so I can read Michelle Singletary's column, "The Color of Money."  She has a lot good to say and provides food for thought.  Not all of what she writes is easy to read, but it's always useful.  This past Sunday, her column was about death.  A friend died, and after death, what her friends and family found was....a perfectly organized financial life.  Her friend wasn't particularly wealthy, but she had her financial house in order.  Her friends and family knew what she had, where it was, and what she wanted done with it.  There was nothing extraneous, no extra paper.  That took a lot of work. I should know, because looking at my financial house, it would take me quite a long time to have everything scanned, filed and discarded.  I guess I'd better stick around a while.
Here in the Trenches, we don't see many people like Michelle Singletary's friend.  Very few clients give us perfectly ordered paperwork.  Most have their finances in various states of disorganization.  We can tell a lot about a client by the way they keep their papers.  The ones with papers in shopping bags?  We know they probably have finances that reflect their paperwork, and our hearts drop when we see the shopping bags come through the door.  Give us a client with perfectly order paperwork, or even better, digitally scanned, any day.  (Ooh wait, I'm hyperventilating). We know their finances will be ordered and easy to follow.  Life in the Trenches is hard enough without having to organize someone else's bank statements.  An organized set of paperwork frees us to think about their case and not about a filing system.  We have time to analyze their case creatively.  Which is a better use of clients' money?  Do you really need me to answer?  Here in the Trenches.