Are We Drowning In Data
By: Brian Dickens Barrabee
Tags: Money, Humor, Sales, Financial, Data

Data, data everywhere and not a drop to drink

Photo by Tomas Yates on Unsplash

As a financial planner, I get the opportunity to use data to predict how a plan will preform during certain periods of a client’s lifetime.

It’s obvious that no one has the crystal ball that can peer into the future. The only thing close to assurances we have that our predictions will come to pass is data from the past. Performance charts both mountain and bar with pie for dessert are dragged out for a single appointment.

The data indicates the the company has produced thusly therefore; liquidity, solvency,profitability and opperating efficiency dictates profitability will be thus and so in the future.

And oh, by the way, the scranus and the fribulous have to be properly aligned in Anartica for this to work out.

There are times I feel as a financial planner, I’m drowning in data.

That’s possibly the reason why I was looking forward to the challenges in my meeting that night with Thomas and Clara Crocker.

They lived with their 2 kids in the wealthy suburb of Short Hills, New Jersey, an upper middle class town right outside of New York City.

They could afford the beautiful house in which they lived; Clara had the time to be a mother to the kids AND run her art gallery in a small shop at the mall; largely because Ashton was rewarded so generously in his position as a Data Scientist in a firm in New York.

Merriam Webster: Data

1 factual information (such as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion,or calculation

2 information in digital form that can be transmitted or processed

3 information output by a sensing device or organ that includes both useful and irrelevant and redundant information and must be processed to be meaningful.

Tom’s work involves #1 #2 and #3.

For this, he is richly rewarded.

What I know about him is that he returns to the company a high degree of competence in his job and a good 12 hours a day at the office sometimes 6 or 7 days a week.

I was to explain to this man and his wife why they should entrust me with their retirement planning.

I’m gonna show up packing — all the charts and data to prove my case. Although my client list was representative of almost every profession, I’d never made a presentation to a Data Scientist (and his wife) before. Was he going to use the same inter-disciplinary scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to object to my recommendations?

My nipples were hard with excitement.

I arrived at their gorgeous house on time.Clara met me at the door and politely ushered me into the library where Tom sat behind a bank of lap tops, desk tops, printers, copiers and scanners

After the preliminary hand bumps he indtroduced me to his lawfirm Hewlett & Packard; intimidating for a financial planner who’s computer horizons included Google, Email and You Tube.

I depended on my firm’s research department to do the grunt work analysis.

I thought I acquitted myself pretty well in making my presentation. I was sorry that Clara elected not to join us. She claimed she didn’t understand what Tom ever did anyway but trusted his methodology and devotion to the family.

He, of course, had his own flow charts and figures. He basically made my job easy by suggesting where he was comfortable investing before I had a chance to recommend it first.

I just sat back and let him sell himself.

He and Clara signed the letter of intent to become my clients.

Tom remained in the library shutting everything down while Clara walked me to to the front door.

It was a late finish for an appointment, around 12:30am

I found it difficult to break away from Tom and his desire to share his investment information. His interest the data itself seemed greater than the conclusions that the data produced. Was he drowning?

As I walk to my car I thought I heard Clara yell at Thomas something like, “I’m sick of your damn data— come to bed and tend to your real homework?”

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