I work pro bono with young couples about to get married. In most cases they have very little in their money budget so most of what we work on is budgeting, debt management and financial protection.
The one budget they have huge amounts of?
Time.
Not free time during the day necessarily (although if they are not parents yet, they don’t know how good they have it in this respect) but the time they have left on this planet. Having a large budget of time life is very valuable in the society we have built for ourselves.
This might be a comment that you would expect from someone in the wrong half of their working life, but it is true. With time on your side, there is a huge amount you can achieve.
There are plenty of articles online about the underestimated power of compounding and we have also written about it here before. On an almost daily basis we present cashflow plans that show clients that they are likely to die with extraordinary amounts of capital left over. They are always a bit sceptical about the numbers, but they are simply doing what all humans do, underestimating the compound effect.
It isn’t just about compounding though.
When we consider the life, we want to live, we shouldn’t be too focused on the money. Point your finances in the right direction; save regularly into equities and conform to the plan, and you will hit your target. What we can lose sight of in the process is decided on the iceberg below the waterline, the non-monetary aspects of life.
The joy of being young is that there lies ahead acres of time that we can spend well on our partners, children and friends (maybe even to a degree on work colleagues). Sadly the drawback of youth is that you rarely listen to those that have gone before and are likely to opt to your own path (down the social media black hole sometimes).
So, we try to guide and educate these young people, to understand that their time budgets are valuable but not infinite. That it is the constant micro-choices about how they spend their time that will add up to major happiness or regret further down the line.
We do what we can to nudge them towards, if not a better way of living, certainly a more thoughtful one.
If you want to explore how you are allocating your time resources and how your money can be better allocated to help, speak to one of our advisers. We are helping people to balance their financial and life goals, from our offices in Hook, Hampshire and throughout the globe.