FINANCE COMMUNITY EXPERT: Claritas Wealth

Financial planning – a journey not a destination

by Tim Walsham, Claritas Wealth

I realise that’s all a bit ‘X Factor’. Everyone is on a journey these days!

In the case of financial planning though it really is a journey.

The idea that we’ll reach a stage of our lives when everything is all sorted is pretty fanciful. There’s a great book by Oliver Burkeman called ‘Meditations for Mortals’ where he quotes a popular American social commentator/philosopher, Sam Harris.

Harris said that he finally realised in his 40s that he had been waiting for and expecting a stage in his life when he’d figured everything out and all of the issues and problems in his life fell away because he’d worked through them all. It was freeing when he realised that every stage of life has it’s own challenges to be dealt with and that will never change.

As an example, we may think that we’ll stop worrying about our children when they grow up but that’s not the case. We just have different worries as we never stop being a parent.

So if we create a financial plan now where we work out what’s important to you and try and plan for it, the one thing we know is that the plan will be wrong. That’s not to say it’s a worthless exercise; we’re just having the best stab at it now as we can.

The next time we revisit the plan we’ll have another best effort and ‘course correct’ as required. Sometimes these will be minor adjustments and sometimes life throws a complete curve-ball and major revisions are required. That’s life.

All I’d say is that in the long run this approach to financial planning really works. I’ve been creating financial plans for my clients for over two decades and the regular ‘course correcting’ keeps us on the right path, even if there is no final destination!