Financial Health by Raj Shah, director and principal of Blue Wealth Capital
The financial planner on a different type of clock-watching
Whilst researching destinations for our family summer holiday recently, I was reminded of an article I read last year called ‘The Tail End’ by Tim Urban, co-author of the popular, stick-figure-illustrated blog ‘Wait But Why’.
The article referred to a previous post in which the authors had laid out the human lifespan visually. A 90-year lifespan, laid out in years, took up about an eighth of an A4 sheet of paper, in months it took up just under quarter of the page and what really blew my mind was seeing the same lifespan set out on the page in weeks and then in days. Those lucky people who live to 90 will have no problem fitting every day of their life on one sheet of paper.
I got to thinking about just how many summer holidays I have left with my wife and our two sons before I’m no longer physically able to go. I’m 44 now, so I’m going to be optimistic and say I’ll probably be fit enough to travel until I’m 75. If so, I have 31 summers left, if I’m really lucky.
On the basis our two sons are now nearly 7 and 8 and will not want to come on holiday with their embarrassing mum and dad much beyond the age of 17 or 18, I have about 10 summer holidays with them left.
I probably eat out once a month, so I’ve got about 550 more chances to eat out. I have even less chances left to go to the cinema or the theatre or a gallery or museum.
I then started thinking about my relationships. Before leaving home to go to university, I spent some time with my parents and brother during at least 90 per cent of my days. Since then, but before I got married and had children, I had probably seen my brother an average of once a month. I now see him once every three months for less than a day. Assuming I live to 90, that leaves about 184 days left to hang out with him.
As the article says, you release that despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life.
The article suggests three things to take away from this information:
- Living in the same place as the people you love matters. I am lucky that, albeit as a result of my father passing away, I see more of my mother. My wife however has probably much less time left with her parents, who are older and live in the same city as us.
- Priorities matter. The time you have left with any person depends largely on where that person falls on your list of life priorities. Make sure you set this list.
- Quality time matters. If you are in your last 10 per cent of time with someone you love, treat that time as precious.
In the words of Seth Godin: ‘All of us are on borrowed time. There are no refunds and there are no guarantees. At some point, the only time you’ll have to worry about is the time you’ve wasted.’
Working with a high-quality financial planner to produce a bespoke goal focused financial/life plan could help to reassure you that the time you have left will definitely not be wasted.
