If you think it's difficult balancing your own checkbook, try doing it for the federal government.
For Randal Quarles, Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance, managing the government's debt has been part of a day's work.
In his nearly six years at Treasury, Quarles, a Utah native, has played major roles in everything from Chinese currency issues and the World Bank to the International Monetary Fund and G8 summits.
But come Friday, Quarles will leave all of that behind. In August, he submitted his resignation to President Bush.
The return to private life will, no doubt, be a dramatic change. But for Quarles, life has been full of contrasts.
The 49-year-old was born in San Francisco but raised in Roy. His father worked at Hill Air Force Base as a small-business administrator.
Quarles graduated from Roy High School, going on to Columbia University and then to Yale, where he received his law degree.
"Perhaps the biggest jump was to go to college in New York City," Quarles said in a phone interview. "A lot of my career, a lot of my life has been spent translating one part of the country for the other, sort of explaining New York to people back in Utah and explaining Utah and the West to people on the East Coast."
But it is his ability to understand the world's complex financial and economic systems that has earned him praise.
"Randy has played a major role in an unusually broad range of matters," Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in a prepared statement. "I was disappointed to learn that Randy had long planned to return to the private sector. ... Over the long term, I will continue to rely on his advice and counsel."
Quarles attributes his success to avoiding what he calls the "logical track."
"One of the things that I've always tried to do with a lot of decisions I've made about my career is to kind of yank myself off of what would seem the path of least resistance," Quarles said. "The biggest contrast one could imagine from Roy, Utah, was New York City."
After achieving success at a New York law firm, Quarles was not content with what appeared to be the logical course of working toward "partner," instead opting to work in the George H.W. Bush Administration in Treasury.
"And so I made the decision, as a six-year associate, to say, 'I'm going to take some time to come down to Washington,"' Quarles said. "It was viewed as neutral at the law firm. It wasn't viewed as advantageous. But I found it enormously valuable personally and professionally to yank myself off of that track."
Prior to his duties as undersecretary, Quarles served as assistant secretary of the Treasury for international affairs and as U.S. executive director of the International Monetary Fund.
Quarles has traveled to roughly 60 countries during his career, assisting in debt relief and increasing grant aid for the world's poorest countries, and helping to develop the financial initiatives for four G8 summits.
One of his trips, in particular, stands out.
"I went once from the G7 summit in Evian in France on the shores of Lake Leman directly to meeting with government officials in Ethiopia, where they were in the middle of a famine of biblical proportions," Quarles said. "It was very instructive to me at the time about the challenges that the world faces and the huge contrasts that there are in the world."
Quarles has helped to identify solutions posed by the risks of $1.5 trillion in retained earnings held by mortgage-buying agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He also has developed new clauses for sovereign debt contracts, creating more flexibility for repayment solutions for countries that default on their loans.
His father, Ralph Quarles, who still lives in Roy, said his son was "very disciplined."
"He loved to have fun, but he knew when the fun should end and things should be serious," Ralph Quarles said. "He was determined as far as his studies were concerned."
While Randal Quarles has no definite plans for what lies ahead, it seems unlikely that he will settle for something logical, like retirement.
"I think it is very useful to periodically say, 'I'm going to ... pursue something different."'
E-mail: danderton@desnews.com