Is being too busy now, jeopardising your future?
If you aren’t careful, then the answer is yes.
Life is busy. We have work, our businesses, family, children, schooling, extracurricular activities. Plus trying to squeeze in a social life in there somewhere too.
And sometimes it can be really difficult to even think about the future when the present is so busy, so challenging, and requires so much of our attention.
But it is fundamentally important to think about the future, and do it in quite a lot of detail, because as Hal Hershfield said in my podcast It’s Never About Money:
“We feel we can always make up time later. So we put things off until later, be it chores, work, or even planning for our future. But this doesn’t serve us well.” – Hal Hershfield, UCLA
(You listen to the full-episode with Hal here: http://bit.ly/INAM-Ep10)
So in order to have the best possible future, we need to prioritise thinking about the future now. Starting with thinking about our ideal future and being really clear about what we want to be doing. And then, determining what are the costs of these things.
It does mean that there may be some sacrifice in the now, to get to our ideal future.
But we will be much more motivated to sacrifice the now to get to the future, if we know what that future looks like. And that’s where that thinking comes in, to give you more clarity and a goal to work towards.
Asking the right questions
I think this is why professional Financial Advisors are so important. Because we help you determine the cost of your life and your future.
We can help ask pertinent questions around your future:
- What are the most important relationships that you want to have in 10 years?
- How old will the kids be in 10 years time? And what will they be doing?
- Where are you going in your professional career?
- What are the bucket list items that you want to achieve in 10 years time?
- What achievement or accomplishments do you want to have?
With the answers to these questions, we can then start drilling down further and determining what are the milestones and timeframes for each goal. We can start to map out the things that need to be achieved within 5, 6, 7 years. And, how much money it will take to achieve these particular objectives.
Then, we can take those monetary amounts and bring them back into a present value lump sum, to determine how much is required right now to be able to start the ball rolling. We will also work out how much needs to be contributed additionally along the way to help achieve those milestone events.
That’s how we determine the cost of your life and your future.
We have a proprietary method of being able to determine the costs of a family’s ideal life, and therefore put an investment program together that assists in achieving that.
We as Stephan Independent Advisory call it a liabilities driven investment approach. It’s not that the objectives are liabilities. The objectives are something that you and your family value, and want to work towards. The liability essentially is the amount of money that is required to fulfil that objective.
So, now is the time to cut through the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and start to prioritise you, your family and your future.
~ Joe
