I recently had a client come to me because she was contemplating a career shift.
She was a high-powered technology executive making a 6-figure salary with phenomenal benefits and tons of travel to exotic locations. She had the kind of job that many in her industry coveted.
But she was tired.
Tired of travelling. Tired of living her life in hotels and spending hours in airports. She’d been to the northern reaches of Russia and to the Sahara Desert, but the place she most wanted to be was home.
She could afford anything she wanted, but the thing she most wanted was time.
Time to read on the screened-in porch she built in her old stone house overlooking acres of forest. Time to knit a funky sweater from a pattern she saw on Etsy. Time to hike with her daughter at the nature reserve nearby.
She was too tired and stressed to enjoy the life her job apparently afforded her.
So she wanted to get a different job.
Specifically, she wanted to start her own business as a home stager. A real estate agent friend of hers had already approached her about it, because her own home was designed so stunningly. The idea had stuck in her head, and she was excited about it.
When she came to me, though, she was apprehensive. She already had a financial advisor. When she had approached him about shifting careers, he was concerned that she was not making a smart financial move.
And, truth be told, based on the numbers - she wasn’t. Giving up a salary like that, with pension and benefits, would be a huge financial blow.
Except the numbers assumed that she wanted to live the same life in retirement that she was living right now.
But the longer she lived that life, the more she realised that her priorities were shifting. What was important to her at the beginning of her career was no longer as important. Her goals for retirement had entirely changed.
There would be a financial cost to giving up her job, yes.
But there would also be a cost - a personal cost - to keeping it.
So we delved deep into what her new goals were for her current life and for her retired life, and why those goals had changed. What was truly motivating her decisions, and how could her financial plan support that? What could her retirement look like based on her starting a business and it thriving? Failing? Coasting by? We looked at ways to protect her current assets, to help her establish a healthy buffer to alleviate the inevitable anxiety that comes
with starting something new, and we set up more frequent check-ins so she could always be sure she was making an informed decision. We came up with a plan to have her transition away from being a salaried employee to becoming a consultant while she built her business, and how her funds could work for her best during that time.
Three months later, she handed in her notice.
The day she did, she sent me a photo of herself sitting on her screened-in porch with a glass of wine and a book and a radiant smile.
She felt confident in her decision because she knew exactly what the roadmap looked like in various scenarios so she felt well-informed and like she was entering this new stage in life with eyes wide open.
Financial planning isn’t about simply making more money at any cost. It is about making your money work to support the kind of life you want to live - now, and later.
Your financial planner is meant to support your goals, not tell you what goals you should have.
If you want to work with a financial planner who puts your goals and values first, book a call.