Are you a D.I.Y.’er? Before I get to the main point, I have to tell you something that my wife insists I still have issues about: my 13th birthday.
On my 13th birthday, I woke up early in the morning…in order to spend the entire day helping my mother wallpaper our kitchen. My mother transformed our kitchen from aqua walls – yes, that was a thing in the ‘60s and ‘70s- to a bold orange wallpaper covered in orange and yellow flowers. I spent my entire 13th birthday learning how to hang wallpaper.
I couldn’t tell you much about other childhood birthdays, but that one is burned into my memory.
The following summer, I spent a few weeks at my aunt and uncle’s farm near New Ulm, Minnesota, near a tiny town called Hanska. Because I was now the “expert” in wallpapering, my aunt decided this was the perfect time to redo her kitchen walls. And to be honest, compared with helping out at the farm by shoveling manure, this was the preferred choice.
If you can imagine an old farmhouse, you know the ceilings aren’t eight feet. They’re closer to ten or maybe higher. We spent the day clearing the room. Setting up the ladders, mixing the paste and getting to work. The wallpaper had a beige background with a pretty ivy pattern. All day long we soaked, pasted, trimmed and pressed it into place. B the end of the day we were pretty proud of what we had accomplished.
Then we stepped back to admire our work.
My Aunt looked at me. I looked at her. We both moved closer to the wall, trying to resolve what we were seeing.
“We didn’t, did we? She asked.
“I think we did”, I said.
We had wallpapered the entire kitchen – every single wall – upside down.
She told me she wouldn’t’ say a word if I didn’t and at age 14, I had no intention of telling anyone. No one ever knew, until today. That house doesn’t even exist anymore, but the story still makes me smile, and it’s a reminder that sometimes, you should really just hire a professional.
Unless someone looked very closely at that wallpaper, everything looked fine. But we knew. The roll was supposed to hang down as we unrolled it. Instead, we held it the opposite way – and the whole job ended up backward.
If your life feels a little upside down, especially if you’ve been trying to “D.I.Y.” your finances, it may be time to bring in someone who knows how to set things right. The last thing you want to have is a conversation with your spouse that starts, “I think we’ve planned our financial life totally upside down.”
If you want life right-side up, then it’s time to schedule your Financialoscopy®.
