Judy is a high Orange who owns three rental properties. Details, record keeping and paperwork are certainly not a strength of Oranges. With renovations, maintenance, utility bills, rent revenues and other papers, tax time creates a horrible stress for her. Receipts, bank statements and bills were everywhere – or nowhere to be found. Never mind that they were almost impossible to match to each specific property.
She had long resigned herself to doing the best she could, and to the reality that her accountant could do the rest – at a pretty high price. Small wonder when she was asking him to be part bookkeeper and part psychic in re-tracing the entire past year with only minimal clues.
A very typical situation that caused huge stress to an Orange but was an hour or two of work for her Gold friend. He simply made a folder for each property for each year. In February it became a matter of running an adding machine tape, writing a five-minute revenue and expense summary for each property and sending the package off to the accountant. Judy’s stress is the great strength of Golds.
Half an hour later and Judy had a full summary and totals of all properties. Along with that, a full set of file folders with labels for the coming year to allow her to just dump her receipts into each folder. Judy’s stress was her friend’s strength. It did start off with an argument and frustration when he watched Judy struggle, not wanting to interfere or ‘correct’ her way of doing it.
Most Oranges are organized – just not in the Gold definition. Making them do it the “Gold way” will never last. What made it stick with Judy is that a)she asked for help and b)her accountants’ bill went from the usual $5,000 plus to $800. THAT made her a believer because “what’s in it for me” was a free $4,000 plus!