Gibson

“I don’t want to run out of later.”

Yesterday I met with a client who sent me those words a couple of weeks ago.

He’d read my recent post about the Jean-Paul Sartre quote on spending your life waiting for later, only to discover that later has passed you by.

He’s recently retired and, sadly, lost his wife not long ago.

Over the years he’s become as much a friend as a client. We share a love of travel and two-wheeled adventures, so our conversations often wander well beyond pensions and investments.

Yesterday was one of those conversations.

He told me that his mum, in her 90s, had recently asked him what his five-year plan was.

There’s something wonderful about a 90-year-old asking her retired son what his plans are for the next five years.

But it got him thinking.

What does he actually want from the years ahead?

For him, it’s travel. Adventures. New places and experiences.

There’s sadness in that too.

He’d imagined sharing much of it with his wife. Now those experiences will be on his own or with friends, rather than with the person he’d planned to enjoy them with.

We can’t change that, and no amount of money will make up for it.

But he recognises that he has a choice about what happens next.

He can spend the coming years looking back at what might have been, or he can make the most of the time and opportunities he still has.

And that’s where my job gets interesting.

Because I’ve been encouraging him to spend more.

Not recklessly. Not without a plan.

But to stop measuring financial success by whether his investment portfolio is worth more this year than it was last year.

He’s spent a lifetime building up his wealth. Now it’s time to let some of that wealth do the job it was intended for.

And if the portfolio starts to come down because he’s out there travelling, having adventures and making memories?

That’s not necessarily a failure of the financial plan. It might be the clearest sign that it’s working.

We spend so much of our lives focused on the return on our investments.

But at this stage of his life, the return on experiences matters far more.

You can always measure the value of a portfolio.

It’s much harder to put a value on a life well lived.

And as my client reminded me yesterday, none of us wants to run out of later.