Procrastination and Money

I drove back from Houston yesterday just in time to shower and dash to an HOA board meeting. I am one of three on the board for our neighborhood. Fortunately, we enjoy each other, and each of us is willing to work hard, so it's a good board and I don't mind the rather long meetings (only once a quarter) with our management company rep.

My least favorite part of the meeting is our executive session in which we review violations of the covenants and restrictions as well as homeowners non-compliant with paying dues. With the latter, we ensure that all notices have been sent, and if the homeowner is well overdue and has not contacted our management company despite all the notices, we vote to send to legal. Which adds hundreds and sometimes thousands to the homeowner's bill (over time), so that an original bill of $170 can balloon to two or three thousand or more (with late fees, title searches, legal costs, etc).

I HATE doing that. I know that some of these people are probably suffering some hardship or other, perhaps an illness or loss of job or divorce. The thing is, if they would just call and tell us what's going on, we could work with them and not have to send to our attorney. We have in the past asked our rep to contact each of them by phone, even though it's not required, in a last ditch attempt to communicate the financial consequences of ignoring the bills and many overdue notices. We've discovered this doesn't do much good.

Recently I saw an article somewhere, perhaps a blog post, on the high cost of procrastination. I'm not sure if this situation would fall under that heading or would belong more to the act of burying one's head in the sand and hoping the problem will go away. It doesn't really matter in this case, the consequence is the same, and it is quite costly.

I have to say, I've been kicking myself recently for some costly consequences to issues I've put off dealing with. Mine were due to classic procrastination. My term life insurance expired earlier this year, and I've had looking into a new policy on my to-do list for at least three years. THREE YEARS. Finally I had a "just do it" day and took care of aged to-do tasks, including the life insurance. Because of the skin cancer I had removed in April, I fell out of the preferred category. If I had done this two or three years ago, my rate would have been much lower. Ooooh, that burns.

I have a few other old tasks on the to-do list that have to do with money, including contacting the cable company about lowering our rate and visiting Verizon to ensure our plan is right-sized. I'm due another "just do it" day.