Thinking

There are times when I suspect that I think differently than other people.  I don't know if I really do, or if its just that I expect and assume things that normal people don't expect and assume.

For example, we had a meeting about three months ago at our bank with the fellow who oversees the administration of the money we have with it.   After the meeting, which included a second guy who spoke at length about financial concepts that sounded deep to me but might have been lightweight to him, I said to the first guy that this was all fun, but all we really needed from him was a) how much money can we expect to have at this time next year, in five years, and in twenty, and b) is he seeing anything in our spending patterns, or in the external environment, that would make him drop those values.  I don't think that these are complex questions.  I do know that they require certain assumptions to be made, and that the assumptions have to be qualified by probability, because, hey, nobody knows.  Fair enough.  And I'll allow that grinding these numbers out takes time and effort, even if all we want to see is the absolute highest level summaries, because even if a large part of it is just rolling formulas forward in Excel, it takes effort.

But what I really don't get is why, when he delivered to us a bound report listing assets and projections, he studded it with terms such as capital risk value and Nominal Value, and included incredibly dense charts showing the progressions over years of income and expenses..  I really don't.  I think it should have been perfectly clear that we didn't want details, we wanted big picture.  Appropriately cautioned, Your Mileage May Vary, yes, but still: don't give me numbers unless they are needed to explain something that needs to be explained.  Or you need action from us, based on them. Is this hard to understand?

Maybe it is.  Or maybe my expectations are just strange.