Balancing wealth, health and time.

We all understand that life is precious and everything can change in an instant. Now and then, we get a little shake-up in life that reminds us of that – maybe someone close to us gets sick or dies suddenly, or perhaps something happens to us that could have gone differently. In the moments that follow, we may talk with those closest to us and reassess what is important to us.

Not long after, we find ourselves right back where we were before. Working too hard, spending too little time on the things that matter, and not living life as though it can all change in an instant.

Working at the intersection of money and life has me thinking about this dichotomy often. Why is it that we fundamentally understand the fragility of life, yet we can’t live life in a way that proves we do?

We are not good at processing our death, and we are not good at balancing our wealth, our health, and our time. We focus too long on wealth and then, too late in life, realise we don’t have enough health or time.

Our goal in life ought to be achieving the perfect balance of those three things – but it’s not just the quantity of each. It’s the order that matters too.

In a book titled ‘Die with Zero’, Bill Perkins, an ex-hedge fund manager, tackles this topic head-on.

His point is, what’s the use of being rich and old? After all, if you could trade places with Warren Buffett, would you?

Of course you wouldn’t. It’s not worth having $100 billion if you are 92 years old. You’d opt to be a broke 20-year-old over being Warren Buffett. Wouldn’t you?

Bill writes, “Everyone says, I want to be rich before I’m 30 or rich before 40, no one’s out there saying I want to be rich before I’m 86. So intuitively, there’s something about the utility of money that it’s not as valuable to you later on in life.”

Bill talks about the seasons of life. Some activities translate nicely into the next season of life, and some don’t. You only have one season of life to climb into bed and read books to your children. They won’t be interested in that when they are adults or even teenagers. There is only one season to watch them in their school concert or sports game.

If you are focused on the wrong thing during that season, i.e., if you get the order wrong, you miss it. The season has gone.

Likewise with our health. Over time our body and mind decay. That’s true, however hard we work at it. We might not be climbing mountains or waterskiing when we are 90.

Some things we can only do now.

Bill’s mantra is: don’t postpone anything and focus on your health.

I said earlier that we are not good a processing our death, partly because most of us are not given that opportunity (thankfully, you might say). If we were, I believe we would live very differently.

Occasionally you come across someone who has. One of those people is Ric Elias. He was sitting in seat 1A on the plane that crash-landed on the Hudson River. He had several minutes, whilst the plane was going down, to “say goodbye to his life”. Everything changed for him in that instant.

He said it wasn’t scary. It was sad. He experienced profound sadness at the things he had not done, the people he hadn’t hugged enough, how much he had let his ego drive him, how often he had tried to be ‘right’ instead of happy and, most importantly, how he had not focused on the most important thing in his life…. his kids.

Ric believes he was given the ultimate gift, the gift to be able to say goodbye to his life and then open his eyes and realise he had a second chance.

With his gift comes enormous responsibility. In his new life, he makes sure he doesn’t postpone anything and focuses on being healthy.

How does this look for you? What’s the thing that you have been putting off that you should do now? Maybe it’s a conversation. Maybe it’s a trip. Maybe it’s leaving a job that maximises your wealth at the expense of your health and your time (and maybe the people you love). So, what season of life are you in, and what are the things you can only do now? It could be anything from climbing a mountain to bathing your kids.

We probably won’t get a chance like Ric, an opportunity to face our life and death head-on, but by stopping and thinking and avoiding the autopilot that society puts us on, we can edge closer to a life that we can look back on and feel was the best –
the absolute best – we could have had.

To learn more, visit www.libertywealth.ky