Wow...was I out of it or what?

Today I drove my oldest daughter back to school in NYC, and on the way back I was along and able to think about all sorts of things.

One of those things was the financing of my two daughters education. My wife Cheryl and I had it all figured out and I actually thought I had it all figured out.

But I was the "idea guy"....I operated at the 20,000 foot level, and Cheryl was the person who had a degree in accounting. (but ended up as a Librarian!)

So I thought I had everything under control until I found myself at home trying to untangle another puzzle. As I said, Cheryl had taken care of the "details"....like actually paying the bills and handling the FAFSA submissions. We agreed on what we would do, but she pulled the trigger.

So here I am, looking at the process for the first time after driving for 10 hours today...and boy is it confusing. Both of my daughters schools appear to have totally different processes for payment and billing. Both appear to have different invoice timing and structure, and so the only thing I have to go by are the old canceled checks and invoices of past payments.

I have not unraveled that big hairball quite yet, but lucky for me Cheryl was great at dropping breadcrumbs that I can follow. She really did document quite a bit if her work.....

Lesson for all out there....pay attention to what your spouse is doing. Pretend you have to pinch hit for them from time to time, and make sure you know what the drill is.

Also....if you are in control of a particularly important home process....document it in some way. Drop breadcrumbs so that those following you can figure out what you were up to and how you operated.

Maybe this is all obvious.....but I guess it wasn't to me!