Tendency to Blab

Some of you may be wondering... what's happening with Jason and Erin's move. I'll give the facts that we know of to this point:

• We have a renter for our house in Irmo, SC and things seem to be going well.
• We moved all of our furniture to a storage location here in Worcester.
• We placed an offer on a house here in Worcester.
• We received a counter offer... to which we countered... which was excepted by the seller!
• We are now scheduling several visits with our agent, lawyers, inspectors and others.

That's really all we know at this point. I'd love to speculate and share more hopes and dreams about this property, but it feels too early at this point. Even though Erin and I feel good about the prospects of being in this house soon, there are still so many things that have to go just right in order for us to move-in.

I noticed a tendency that I developed in my high school and college years; I would get so excited about the prospects of something new or a big decision coming up in my life that I would start discussing it with people... lots of people... before it was a sure thing.

Now... I'm a big believer in having a small circle of people with whom you can discuss big decisions. You should have a diverse group of peers and mentors with different perspectives. You should try to present the facts surrounding your decision in an unbiased manner (...harder than it sounds) as to not influence their judgement in making recommendations. Once you've had a chance to meet with this circle of advisers, a complicated decision begins to look more obvious (hopefully).

My problem in those later adolescent years was the tendency to blab to others... and try to influence as many people as possible to the outcome I wanted in the upcoming life decision.

Two results from this tendency began to show up... as I either:

• Made a bad decision (e.i. the new Nissan Xterra I leased in 2001... I impressed the ladies but paid almost 2x the vehicle value during the years I possessed it)
• Spoke too soon and it never happened (e.i. all the cool jobs I thought would be easy to land the day I got out of college... I even told strangers about my potential employers)

And now, feeling a bit nervous, but confident at the prospects of buying this house, I hope that I've done my homework on the numbers correctly and pray that I haven't just influenced my circle of advisers to just agree with me, rather than give me unbiased and sound advice.

How do you make big decisions?