Are You Prepared?

Despite spending the better part of five years with first the Cub Scouts and then its more advanced sibling, the Boy Scouts, I was perhaps the worst member in either legion in the New York tri-state area.

When assembling a tent for an overnight, it more resembled an undertaking of Abbott and Costello than a true outdoorsman and 99% of the time it collapsed during the night. My handmade campfires lasted all of 30 seconds before the sure flameout and the inevitable cold dinner. The results of my trying to adhere to the organization’s requirements to tie knots such as a bowline or sheepshank could not have effectively restrained a 90-year-old grandmother.

To say it was not a pleasant experience would set records for understatement and the Scouts’ enduring motto “Be Prepared” was an adage that, sadly, never applied to yours truly.

Now, there’s sort of a Byzantine thread that connects my laughable and most definitely unprepared days in a crumbled khaki uniform and ineptly tied neckerchief to what is visible in today’s financial demographics in general and the public accounting space in particular.

As I’ve chronicled a number of times in this space, many CPA firms I visit are woefully unprepared for succession let alone retirement. Adding to that, I recently read where a financial services firm conducted a retirement survey among women, and if you thought the succession numbers were woeful in public accounting, try wrapping your arms around this: Four out of 10 women have less than $10,000 saved for retirement and nearly 60% of women over the age of 45 have just $50,000 saved for their golden years.

Now when you consider that the cost of a new Kia starts at roughly $14,000, that makes sort of an eye-opening statement about the above-mentioned retirement shortfall. That’s not exactly what I would call prepared.

Closer to home, I can recount hundreds of similar stories of CPA firm owners  I have spoken with who keep procrastinating succession planning, promising to “get around to it someday.” One practitioner defiantly told me he would keep working until he basically expires at his desk. I walked away unsure of exactly how anyone benefited from that, but again, it was not my firm and not my decision.

So as we sit down Thursday and proceed to both overeat as well as overdose on tryptophan, you may want to give some thought to 2013 and beyond. Because whether it’s a total of $10,000 in an IRA or a cadre of 60-plus partners with no one on the bench behind them, that signals big trouble in the years ahead.

Even if unlike me, you remember from your scouting days how to tie a square knot.