By David Lamb
Time is an essential component of a balanced lifestyle and, regardless of any other factors, we all have the same amount of time in any one day.
But time is a strange thing. Is it long, or is it short? It depends upon what you are doing, doesn’t it?
If you are in a new relationship time flies by, but if you are stuck in the queue at the supermarket during lockdown it drags.
Time also seems to get quicker the older you get.
Do you remember the ‘Millennium bug’, when all computers were going to crash at midnight on 31 December 1999 and aeroplanes could be falling out of the sky? I recall all the work (and time) we had to do to protect our IT systems from this potential disaster and what happened? Nothing, absolutely nothing. I did not know whether to laugh or cry.
That was 21 years ago! A fifth of a century! The frightening thing is it only seems like three or four years ago. How quickly will the next 21 years ago? Will it seem like three or four years again? How will you be in 21 years time?
It is not just our time we need to consider, but other people’s.
A couple of years ago, we went to see the Rolling Stones in concert with friends who said that they could not wait to see them again. With the Stones having a combined age of over 300 years, they had better be quick!
How quickly do children grow up? This is valuable time that should not be wasted doing less important things. One minute you are changing their nappies, the next they are scrounging money to put petrol in their cars! Have you noticed that as children grow up, when they leave you, they wave with less and less fingers?
Another strange thing with time is that people will trade it for something less important, money. They spend too long chasing it.
An important element for a financial plan should be to identify when you can stop doing the things you don’t want to do and start doing the things you do want to do. It will also help determine how much is enough which will then help you understand how much time you need to spend earning the amount money you need to support your lifestyle.
Do you have sufficient time to do the things you want to do? If not, what do you plan to do about it?
