Tomorrow Is Usually the Right Time

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Part 2: Tomorrow Is Usually the Right Time

Over the years, I've lost count of the number of people who've said something along the lines of, "I know I should probably come and see you, but I'm just not quite ready yet."

They usually say it with a smile.

Almost as though they're apologising.

Sometimes it's because work has become overwhelming. Sometimes they're in the middle of renovating a house, helping children through school, caring for ageing parents or trying to get a business through another busy year. Whatever the reason happens to be, there is almost always a genuine intention to deal with it.

Just not today.

I've never taken that personally because I understand exactly where they're coming from.

Life has a habit of demanding our attention every single day. There is always something more urgent that needs to be dealt with before we get around to thinking about ourselves.

What I've found interesting, though, is that the "better time" people are waiting for almost never arrives.

Instead, life simply presents another reason to wait.

There Always Seems To Be Something More Important

When we're younger, the focus is usually on building a career, buying a home or starting a family.

Then children arrive and become the priority.

After that, work often becomes more demanding just as parents begin needing a little more support. Before long, retirement starts appearing on the horizon and people wonder where the last twenty years disappeared.

Every stage of life brings its own responsibilities, and every stage seems to convince us that we'll have more time once we get through the current one.

The difficulty is that life rarely becomes less complicated.

It simply changes shape.

One set of responsibilities quietly gives way to another, and before we know it, the conversation we planned to have a few years ago has somehow been postponed for a decade.

I don't say that as a criticism.

If anything, I think it's one of the most common patterns I see.

Good people with good intentions simply become busy living their lives.

Most People Don't Come Because Everything Is Going Well

If I look back over the thousands of conversations I've had with clients, very few started because someone woke up one morning and decided it seemed like a nice day to organise their financial future.

Usually something had happened.

Perhaps they had been offered a redundancy package and suddenly had decisions to make.

Maybe they were thinking about selling a business they had spent thirty years building.

Sometimes it was an inheritance.

Sometimes it was a divorce.

Occasionally it was a health scare that completely changed the way they thought about time.

Life has an interesting way of forcing conversations we've been postponing.

There's nothing unusual about that.

The problem is that those conversations often become far more difficult once circumstances have already changed.

When emotions are running high and important decisions need to be made quickly, people naturally feel more pressure.

The irony is that financial planning is usually at its most valuable before those moments arrive.

Not because it predicts the future.

No one can do that.

But because it gives people the opportunity to think clearly while they still have time on their side.

Planning Is Less About Answers Than It Is About Options

One of the biggest misconceptions about financial planning is that people assume it is about finding all the answers.

I've never really seen it that way.

To me, good planning has always been about creating options.

When people start thinking ahead, they usually discover they have more flexibility than they realised.

There is time to adjust.

Time to reconsider.

Time to ask questions they hadn't thought to ask before.

There is no pressure to solve everything immediately because there is still room to make thoughtful decisions.

I often think of financial planning as being similar to preparing for a long journey.

Most people wouldn't set off across Australia without first having some idea where they were going, how long the trip might take or what they might need along the way.

That doesn't mean every detail has to be mapped out perfectly.

In fact, some of the best experiences happen because plans change.

But having a general direction makes it much easier to respond when unexpected things happen.

Life isn't very different.

The Clients Who Surprise Me The Most

One thing that has always fascinated me is that the people who benefit most from financial planning are not necessarily those with the largest investment portfolios.

Quite often, they're the people who simply want greater confidence about the decisions they're already making.

They want to know whether they're heading in the right direction.

Whether they're missing something important.

Whether there are opportunities they haven't considered.

I think many people imagine they need to reach a certain level of wealth before seeking advice.

My experience has been almost the opposite.

The earlier someone begins asking good questions, the more opportunities they usually have available to them.

Once certain decisions have already been made, those options naturally become more limited.

That's nobody's fault.

It's simply how time works.

One Conversation Can Change The Way People Think

Something I've noticed over the years is that people often leave their first meeting feeling very different from when they arrived.

Not because their financial situation has suddenly transformed.

That rarely happens.

It's because uncertainty has started to give way to clarity.

For months, or sometimes years, they've been carrying questions around in their heads.

Should we be doing something different?

Are we on track?

Have we left things too late?

Those questions have a habit of growing larger the longer they're left unanswered.

Then we sit down for an hour or two, talk everything through, and suddenly the path ahead feels much clearer.

Nothing magical has happened.

They simply have direction.

I've often thought that confidence doesn't come from having every answer.

It comes from knowing what the next step looks like.

Why Tomorrow Usually Makes Sense

People occasionally ask me when they should come and see a financial planner.

They're often expecting me to nominate an age or a dollar figure.

The truth is, I don't think either of those things matters as much as people imagine.

What matters is whether you've started the conversation.

Whether you've taken the time to understand where you are today and whether the path you're following is likely to take you where you hope to end up.

Because financial planning has never really been about predicting markets or trying to guess what governments will do next.

It's about making thoughtful decisions while you still have choices available.

Looking back over the years, I can't remember many people telling me they wished they had waited longer before getting advice.

What I hear much more often is, "I wish we'd done this years ago."

Not because everything would have been dramatically different.

But because they would have spent less time wondering whether they were making the right decisions.

Perhaps that's why, whenever someone asks me when the right time is, I usually smile.

Not because I have a clever answer.

But because after all these years, I've learnt that tomorrow is usually a better time than someday.

And someday has a remarkable habit of arriving much later than any of us expect.