Financial Planning
As a kid, it was how many weeks of allowance would buy what you yearned for. But as you move through life, the complexities of financial planning increase. That’s not bad, just something to be aware of.
It’s hard to know how much is “enough” for what might come along after you stop working. And it’s hard not to get sucked into valuing yourself by the number of digits in your investment account–if you have one–once work no longer provides an identity. But if you have determined what’s enough and are fortunate enough to have more than that, why are you sitting on the rest?
Those of us over 50 hold over 75% of all the financial assets in the US. What are we doing with that?
I’m not stumping for the non-profits with that question. It’s a quality of life issue that each of us answers a different way. Those answers depend on the money available, sure. But the effectiveness of these decisions also depends how well we assess our priorities as we make money decisions.
Are you telling yourself you “don’t need” that new furniture you really want when there’s money available for it? When you do that, you’re living from a scarcity mentality that impoverishes your whole life, not just your financial decisions.
The flip side of this issue deserves a good look, too. Do you need to get your teeth fixed but can’t because you “don’t have the money for it”–while you continue to smoke or head for the casino three nights a week? It’s all too easy to make decisions based on childish emotions or miserly adult ways when neither serves you well.
These aspects of financial planning are important to consider no matter how much or how little money you have to work with. “How much” isn’t the operative phrase here. “How well” works better. As in “How well will doing this meet my needs?”
I grew up in a large family that didn’t have money to spare. ” We just did things a bit differently than some of the other families in the neighborhood. Mom made the soup we ate. (We naively assumed Campbell’s was a luxury.) We created many of our toys and came up with our own games complete with rules. The Mother Lode in all that is that every single one of us is creative as an adult–in how we decorate our homes, how we solve our problems, how we live our lives. Our parents blessed with wisdom on how to use our money well rather than savvy on how to amass a lot of it.
Financial planning is not just a matter of “having enough money.” It’s about balancing what you have with what you believe in and want to do–whether it’s a world cruise, starting an heirloom vegetable seed business, funding a school in a Third World village, or treating yourself to a cookie.
Give yourself the gift of good thought in all this. it’s not about how much money you have. It’s a about what you choose and how it enhances your life.
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Mary Lloyd is a speaker, consultant, and coach and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. For more see her website. She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.
Tags: living well as we age, non-financial retirement planning