Delivering Financial Advice for the Family Assets

Whenever we meet with our financial advisor, I feel like I've just taken a crash course in Econ 201 again.

Ok, this is the point where I feel like I have to apologize for having a financial advisor. No, I don't have millions, only a desire to stop working before I'm 70. Of course, husband fully intends to croak in the show ring at the Ohio State Fair some day.

Back to economics...

So our financial advisor is explaining to us the benefit of our new strategy, called active management where we have our small investments managed like a big fund, with experts moving our money around from stocks to gold, to under his mattress, to back into small cap stocks, to Bernie Madoff (luckily we didn't get to that step).

We are having this in-depth financial discussion at our dining room table, which is very convenient except for the fact that our small children also have access to the dining room.

Our three-year-old daughter races in and skids to a stop. She is wearing a marker-stained OSU cheerleader outfit. She stares at the financial advisor, a very nice man who wears a tie, and finally says are you the pizza man?

We shoo her out and proceed to discuss the status of my 401K rollover, and how many millions of today's dollars we'll need to save just to keep ourselves affording Depends, Pepsi two-liters and State Fair passes.

Our four-year-old son marches in and stage whispers to my husband Ryan says that's the pizza man. Disbelieving his father, he says loudly to me, Is that the pizza man?

By now our financial advisor is ready to have us sign some forms and discuss our contribution to Roth IRAs (or something), when our son returns. Naked from the waist down.

He streaks through the dining room, forgets his pants and then streaks back through to get them.

After we had given our financial advisor a detailed peek at the family assets and accused him of working in food service, we sent him on his way.

A few years ago we would have been mortified by this whole experience. But as veteran parents, we simply tossed our son a pair of undies and finished our pizza.