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Singletary: It’s time to assess the mess

By Michelle Singletary

Published: January 13, 2017, 6:00am

This is it.

This is the year you will get your house in order.

You will clear away the clutter.

You will get rid of debt.

Your home and your finances will get the special attention they need.

And I’ll help you along the way. This is the first week of the 21-day #NoDebtNoMess Color of Money Challenge. In a previous column, I laid out the schedule.

Week 1: Assess the Mess. Runs through Jan. 14.

Week 2: Reduce Redundancy. Runs from Jan. 15-21.

Week 3: Lighten Your Load. Runs from Jan. 22-28.

If you missed the start of the challenge, just join in at any time. From whatever date you begin, plan out 21 days to accomplish the goal of getting serious and bringing order to your life.

This week, let’s talk about “Assess the Mess.”

Get a notepad and start by walking around your house. Identify a few areas that really need decluttering. As you pick your areas, consider why you have so much stuff. Why can’t you let things go? It’s through understanding that you gain wisdom.

As for your finances, this first week you should be working on your net worth statement. I’ve updated a template for you to use. Here’s the link to a PDF version: http://wapo.st/2id5wfU. List everything you own — cash in bank accounts, retirement investments, value of personal property and what you owe — credit card balances, personal loans, any retirement account loans, car notes and mortgages.

The point of this exercise is for you to get a snapshot of where you stand financially by looking at the positive part of your balance sheet (your assets) and the negative part (your liabilities).

The goal is to have a positive net worth, meaning you own more than you owe.

Through this challenge, I’m going to show you my own assessment. You can soon see videos of my own decluttering process at washingtonpost.com. Search for #NoDebtNoMess. And I want you to record your efforts as well. With your permission to post, send your own videos to colorofmoney@washpost.com. Keep them to under 5 minutes.

Part of the reason we don’t clean up our clutter is because it becomes so overwhelming. So we close off rooms and closets because we are embarrassed. I have a lovely home office underneath all the paper on the floor and boxes of books. Every so often, I clean up only to junk the place again.

I have trouble throwing things away. I keep thinking I’ll need some piece of paper or that I’ll read that book one day. My tendency toward hoarding is rooted in some deep personal stuff. Abandoned by my mother and father and left to be raised by my maternal grandmother, Big Mama, I hold on to things. It’s the little Michelle in me who can’t let go because she was let go.

The same kind of thing may be happening in your financial life. You don’t talk about the financial chaos you’ve created. And as a result, you don’t get help to fix it because you’re ashamed.

I wanted to use the clutter in your house as an analogy for the disorder you’ve created by not watching your money. You’ve accumulated debt because of your abandonment issues. Or maybe you were abused or poor while growing up. Perhaps you grew up having everything and now you can’t deny yourself anything even though you don’t have the money.

So this week of the challenge, rather than building a budget or cleaning out your closet, I just want you to assess where you are. Think about how you got here. Why is your house so messy? Why do you have so much debt?

You can’t straighten things up for good until you trace and acknowledge your mess and then create a plan to stay clean. And recognize that it will be an ongoing struggle. But you can do this.

Michelle Singletary welcomes comments and column ideas. Reach her in care of The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, DC 20071; or singletarym@washpost.com.

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