Financial Health with Raj and Fiona Shah of Blue Wealth Capital

The financial planners ask – in this ‘new normal’, what is true freedom?

About this time last year, we wrote an article for unLTD about a different type of clock watching. The inspiration was a post by Tim Urban called ‘The Tail End’ – Tim is co-author of the popular blog ‘Wait But Why’.

In the post, the authors had laid out the human lifespan visually. They had managed to fit a 90-year lifespan, in years, on an A4 sheet of paper and this only took up about an eighth of the sheet. When represented in months, 90 years took up just under quarter of the page and when the same lifespan was set out on the page in weeks and then in days, this really blew our minds. Just think, those lucky people who do live to 90 will have no problem fitting every day of their life on one sheet of paper!

Less than three weeks after that article was published, the country went into lockdown as the world was impacted by COVID-19. Our lives changed in ways many of us could never have imagined. We were forced to stay at home to save lives. Many of us worked at home. WFH or ‘working from home’ became the new normal. Those with children may have taught them from home, a lot of us exercised from home and socialised there too (thank goodness for Zoom and take-outs!).

A year on, we are now tentatively easing our way out of lockdown. We are starting to socialise, shop, visit the hairdressers, go to the gym. The guidance on working, however, is ‘you should remain working from home where you can’. Many believe WFH is here to stay with several international companies announcing renewed contracts with WFH becoming the new norm. But will we be WFH – or living from work (LFW)?!

“I’ll just see if that email has arrived” – how and when can you actually switch off?

“Mummy, please can you read us a story – sure, but let me just check my inbox” – how will this impact your home life?

“Please don’t move my stuff – I’m in the middle of an important project” – is working from the same table you eat at with family a good thing?

“I cannot wait to get away” – will you want to escape from ‘the office’ (i.e. home) more?

And how will this impact the choices you make about how you spend your money and subsequently plan for when work becomes optional (note: we still don’t use the word ‘retire’)?

Morgan Housel, partner at The Collaborative Fund, recently tweeted a quote from Nassim Taleb – essayist, scholar, and former option trader and risk analyst – “My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill”.

This got us thinking again – with this new normal, what is true freedom?

So many people think retirement is their goal.
We prefer to say planning
for freedom:

  • Freedom to go for walks.
  • To play with your kids or grandkids.
  • To put your smartphone away.
  • To take days off.
  • To ignore emails.
  • To cancel meetings.
  • To say no and embrace JOMO (the joy of missing out!).

Working with a high-quality financial planner who understands this could be the key to ensuring your one sheet of paper is filled with the things YOU did on YOUR terms.

Raj Shah is founder of Blue Wealth Capital and has been shortlisted for Financial Planner of the Year and Investment Adviser of the Year.

Raj can be reached at:

raj@bluewealthcapital.com

Fiona Shah is operations director at Blue Wealth Capital.
Fiona can be reached at:

office@bluewealthcapital.com

www.bluewealthcapital.com