Undervalued Assets

Originally posted October 16, 2007

When I don't understand something, the thought of it stays in this little room in my brain, walking the floor over and over until a door opens and bammo! I get it!

Like when I was registering for my wedding shower and all of the sudden really and truly *got* the concept of delayed reciprocity...something I had studied two years prior in an anthro class but didn't sit right with me. This tribe somewhere or other made these huge gifts to each other...basically giving massive gifts of livestock and western goods to each other. Then they just had to sit and wait until it was their turn to be on the end that gets the gifts. This seemed so bizarre to me- delayed reciprocity: you'll get your crap back eventually, but not from the person you gave it to. Then I got married and *got* it: people give gifts to start you off and someday you will give them gifts to start them off, or your parents gave them gifts to start them off, or grandparents and so on. The end result is that everyone gets a start that they alone couldn't purchase because we as a society have entered into a delayed reciprocity covenant with each other about marriage.

I took accounting for lawyers and got the pleasure of learning all about undervalued assets, which lives in that room in my brain where I put things that don't make sense. Basically there are two ways that an asset can be undervalued: a person can have something that the value of is hidden from them- you have a diamond that you think is glass, you have a picasso on the back of a farmhouse painting. The other possibility is that a person has something of value but for whatever reason refuses to see the value in the item or lacks the desire to get the full value. Therein lay my confusion. How can you have something that you should know is precious and believe it to be of little value? We were presented with examples- real estate, offensive but valuable memorabilia, but I still in my head couldn't believe that someone could have a precious stone in their hands and continue to say "what, this old rock?"

The door has opened. I get it now.

If you ever meet my friend Marissa, know that she is a diamond. If your thought is ever to list her in your inventory as a rock you may wish to consult further with your accountant.